It's printed in a large font on the selvages of the harvest-theme fabrics I was pressing the other day. To my contrarian bent of mind, that probably means you SHOULD use it for just that.
In the hopes of keeping children from being burned in their own pajamas (like maybe when the rest of the house is on fire??? what?), it has become standard policy to construct their sleepwear out of fabric treated with "toxic fire retardant chemicals" which "at critical points in development can damage the reproductive system and cause deficits in motor skills, learning, memory and behavior. Some are carcinogenic."
Makes perfect sense!!!
Frankly, if you're not allowing your children to smoke in bed, play snapdragon unchaperoned, read books by candlelight under the covers, or heat their bedrooms with open flames, I think it's probably a good trade-off to spend a third of their time NOT enveloped in hormone-disrupting-chemical-saturated attire.
Parents these days are getting in trouble for sending grainless lunches to school (but not meatless ones)....
Parents are criticized for not letting their little ones eat a McDonald's, or for limiting sweets....
Parents are, however, encouraged to give inappropriate drugs to their toddlers, limit the kinds of foods that nourish their little bodies and brains, and drench their surroundings with documentably-harmful -- and arguably-superfluous -- flame-retardants.
The fact that these fabric treatments are actually banned in Europe means nothing to us in America! [sarcasm alert] We believe our chemical companies and their puppets in government wouldn't LIE TO US! Why, that would be ... that would be ...
TYPICAL.
So, despite being tempted to do just that, I WON'T be making jammies out of the fabric I bought. But I am pleased that the autumn-theme quilt i'm making won't be off-gassing hormone-disrupters on us.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
here we go again, again
Oh brother....
I thoughtlessly decided to "subscribe" and watch the "For Women Only: The Weight Loss Solution" special event. I'll never again get offended when people insult "paleo" because Oh ... My ... Gods....
Yesterday was Day One: while I pressed and cut fabric for my next three projects, I listened in. There was an introductory interview of Neely Quinn by Sean Croxton, in which he led her to say all kinds of stupid stuff, like:
Neely also mentioned how the discussions at PaleoFX were SO anti-carb -- she complained that the provided food was, like, all PROTEIN and FAAAAAT, and there wasn't much of it! So she went out and brought in a SAAALAD cuz she needed some CARBS ... and this guy was, like, harassing her, saying "you're eating CAAAAARBS!"....
But that gem was just the first course! I skipped the next video, which was probably more intelligent -- Mark Sisson talking about The Dangers of "Chronic Cardio." I'll never do THAT again, so i'm not really interested ... and besides, i've always disliked podcasts and interview-videos. ;-) The third and last installment of the day was Melissa Joulwan, "How to Lose Weight & Heal Your Thyroid" ... except she didn't, and she didn't.
Like so many faddish young things, she wandered through bad diets and ill health for decades, and it sounds like she continues the cycles of "better" and "brainless 'intervention' catches up." At one point when she was visiting a doctor because she "didn't feeeeel gooood" (just imagine that spoken in a whiny California-girl accent...), he told her she had a nodule on her thyroid and proceeded to EXCISE MOST OF IT.
Sorry, kids -- "healing" and "cutting out then having trouble adjusting supplemental hormone" are NOT synonymous.
With the help of alternative health-care providers she jumped through hoops of goofy protocols and senseless exercise regimens ... and considers herself something of a cognoscenti on this score! She has two cookbooks out, and she spoke a little on how she deals with taking lunch to work -- you see, you put some frozen broccoli in the bottom of a Tupperware container, then add some lightly cooked meat that you prepared during an afternoon's-worth of work over the weekend (like broiling chicken-breasts), drizzle on a little sauce (tahini, she suggested); then at mid-day, you just nuke it for a minute, and there's lunch! For a quick meal at home, open a can of sardines, garnish with a little parsley, and there it is!
Let me get this straight -- this woman has published two cookbooks, and this is her idea of paleo-quality meals??? Just because her chicken is pastured?
There's no doubt in my mind that these two women didn't get the memo about fat -- active people can't live on chicken breast, frozen broccoli, a drizzle of sesame paste, and sardines ... even if it IS better than what the majority of Americans eat. No wonder they think they need more carbs.
I can hardly wait to see what the rest of the week brings!
^^^ sarcasm font...
I thoughtlessly decided to "subscribe" and watch the "For Women Only: The Weight Loss Solution" special event. I'll never again get offended when people insult "paleo" because Oh ... My ... Gods....
Yesterday was Day One: while I pressed and cut fabric for my next three projects, I listened in. There was an introductory interview of Neely Quinn by Sean Croxton, in which he led her to say all kinds of stupid stuff, like:
"I used to say, 'Food is my boyfriend."'
"I had to break up with chocolate."
"When I gave up gluten, I cried."You begin to observe, this is a woman with significant food issues. No wonder she thinks that eating disorders can go back to your childhood, and how traumatic it was when you had to sit at the dinner table.... She also thinks that if you have carb-cravings, it means you NEEEEEEEED them! She sounds very Freudian -- I wonder if she has daddy issues, too?
Neely also mentioned how the discussions at PaleoFX were SO anti-carb -- she complained that the provided food was, like, all PROTEIN and FAAAAAT, and there wasn't much of it! So she went out and brought in a SAAALAD cuz she needed some CARBS ... and this guy was, like, harassing her, saying "you're eating CAAAAARBS!"....
But that gem was just the first course! I skipped the next video, which was probably more intelligent -- Mark Sisson talking about The Dangers of "Chronic Cardio." I'll never do THAT again, so i'm not really interested ... and besides, i've always disliked podcasts and interview-videos. ;-) The third and last installment of the day was Melissa Joulwan, "How to Lose Weight & Heal Your Thyroid" ... except she didn't, and she didn't.
Like so many faddish young things, she wandered through bad diets and ill health for decades, and it sounds like she continues the cycles of "better" and "brainless 'intervention' catches up." At one point when she was visiting a doctor because she "didn't feeeeel gooood" (just imagine that spoken in a whiny California-girl accent...), he told her she had a nodule on her thyroid and proceeded to EXCISE MOST OF IT.
Sorry, kids -- "healing" and "cutting out then having trouble adjusting supplemental hormone" are NOT synonymous.
With the help of alternative health-care providers she jumped through hoops of goofy protocols and senseless exercise regimens ... and considers herself something of a cognoscenti on this score! She has two cookbooks out, and she spoke a little on how she deals with taking lunch to work -- you see, you put some frozen broccoli in the bottom of a Tupperware container, then add some lightly cooked meat that you prepared during an afternoon's-worth of work over the weekend (like broiling chicken-breasts), drizzle on a little sauce (tahini, she suggested); then at mid-day, you just nuke it for a minute, and there's lunch! For a quick meal at home, open a can of sardines, garnish with a little parsley, and there it is!
Let me get this straight -- this woman has published two cookbooks, and this is her idea of paleo-quality meals??? Just because her chicken is pastured?
There's no doubt in my mind that these two women didn't get the memo about fat -- active people can't live on chicken breast, frozen broccoli, a drizzle of sesame paste, and sardines ... even if it IS better than what the majority of Americans eat. No wonder they think they need more carbs.
I can hardly wait to see what the rest of the week brings!
^^^ sarcasm font...
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
is brain-fog a danger sign for dementia?
You have to wonder!
Dementia seems to be a situation in which the brain is not able to use energy the way it should. Brain-fog seems to be a lesser manifestation of the same nature.
One of the very first things I noticed when I first went on Atkins, over a decade ago, was that a few days into it, I woke in the morning with a clear mind.
Was it because I was no longer using wheat? It had been a long time since sugar was a significant part of my diet, but I certainly wasn't limiting starches before that. Up to that point, I had been a believer in the low-fat dogma that dominated the nutritional conversation since the '70s. The New Diet Revolution was astonishing to me from cover to cover -- trying it out made me change almost the entire contents of my pantry.
Was it some other food that I used to eat, which disagreed with me in ways I didn't realize? Maybe -- i'm more likely nowadays to wake up with brain-fog, when known allergens are rampant. Could have been dairy, could have been FODMAPs, could have been yeast-encouragers....
No matter what it was, it was blatant -- low-carb was as good for my brain as it was for all my other parts. Headaches became less common and thinking became sharper. Ketosis rocks.
If nobody has yet conducted a study looking at past "fog" problems and current Alzheimer's patients, I sure wish they would....
Dementia seems to be a situation in which the brain is not able to use energy the way it should. Brain-fog seems to be a lesser manifestation of the same nature.
One of the very first things I noticed when I first went on Atkins, over a decade ago, was that a few days into it, I woke in the morning with a clear mind.
Was it because I was no longer using wheat? It had been a long time since sugar was a significant part of my diet, but I certainly wasn't limiting starches before that. Up to that point, I had been a believer in the low-fat dogma that dominated the nutritional conversation since the '70s. The New Diet Revolution was astonishing to me from cover to cover -- trying it out made me change almost the entire contents of my pantry.
Was it some other food that I used to eat, which disagreed with me in ways I didn't realize? Maybe -- i'm more likely nowadays to wake up with brain-fog, when known allergens are rampant. Could have been dairy, could have been FODMAPs, could have been yeast-encouragers....
No matter what it was, it was blatant -- low-carb was as good for my brain as it was for all my other parts. Headaches became less common and thinking became sharper. Ketosis rocks.
If nobody has yet conducted a study looking at past "fog" problems and current Alzheimer's patients, I sure wish they would....
Sunday, October 19, 2014
primal-scream time
I started reading that NYTimes article about how we shouldn't be worrying about ebola, but OMGAWD ...FLU!!!!!
[aaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh]
Not to mention, "...parents have hallucinated a connection between immunizations and autism...."
YOU dickweeds in the media are responsible for the nonsense that ordinary people believe about nutrition and wellness (and a lot of other stuff) -- this point cannot be hammered home enough. Without television, radio, and idiotic periodicals, the most moronic, far-fetched BULLSHIT would not be so ardently believed by modern folks.
Without the constant commercials blatting that you-can-have-it-all-just-take-this-pill, without the lies-repeated-often-enough, without IGNORANT PEOPLE getting delusions-of-grandeur from their fame and popularity, maybe ... just MAYBE a little reason might creep into the conversation.
Without pharmaceutical companies making themselves responsible for what medical-schools teach -- without food processing giants bribing dieticians into saying that toxins are an important part of a balanced diet (otherwise you feel DEPRIVED, don'cha-know) -- without specialists generalizing outside their spheres of expertise -- without self-aggrandizing, greedy egotists taking hold of the wheel of society, maybe our ships of state wouldn't be steering for the rocks as they are....
If it weren't for the sound-byte and its written equivalent, the astounding stupidity of the opinion-makers wouldn't be able to hide quite so well, and perhaps those twits wouldn't have the cachet that they do. It's ironic that our modern hand-held technology might end up being the tools allowing the truth to "out" -- like Paul Harvey and his "The Rest of the Story."
Without the camera set up by that heroic bartender, the 47% would probably only have learned too late about the contempt in which they were held by a certain self-righteous "public servant." Personal- and dashboard-cams force the police to behave the way they should. Recording devices reveal the WHOLE speech as well as the out-takes, which the Evening News "protects" us from. It's getting harder for people to keep their dirty little secrets.
...Which is a damned good thing, seeing how so very MANY dirty little secrets there are out there. One of the biggest is how the world of journalism has betrayed the trust of society, and TOTALLY fucked up their job.
[aaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh]
Not to mention, "...parents have hallucinated a connection between immunizations and autism...."
YOU dickweeds in the media are responsible for the nonsense that ordinary people believe about nutrition and wellness (and a lot of other stuff) -- this point cannot be hammered home enough. Without television, radio, and idiotic periodicals, the most moronic, far-fetched BULLSHIT would not be so ardently believed by modern folks.
Without the constant commercials blatting that you-can-have-it-all-just-take-this-pill, without the lies-repeated-often-enough, without IGNORANT PEOPLE getting delusions-of-grandeur from their fame and popularity, maybe ... just MAYBE a little reason might creep into the conversation.
Without pharmaceutical companies making themselves responsible for what medical-schools teach -- without food processing giants bribing dieticians into saying that toxins are an important part of a balanced diet (otherwise you feel DEPRIVED, don'cha-know) -- without specialists generalizing outside their spheres of expertise -- without self-aggrandizing, greedy egotists taking hold of the wheel of society, maybe our ships of state wouldn't be steering for the rocks as they are....
If it weren't for the sound-byte and its written equivalent, the astounding stupidity of the opinion-makers wouldn't be able to hide quite so well, and perhaps those twits wouldn't have the cachet that they do. It's ironic that our modern hand-held technology might end up being the tools allowing the truth to "out" -- like Paul Harvey and his "The Rest of the Story."
Without the camera set up by that heroic bartender, the 47% would probably only have learned too late about the contempt in which they were held by a certain self-righteous "public servant." Personal- and dashboard-cams force the police to behave the way they should. Recording devices reveal the WHOLE speech as well as the out-takes, which the Evening News "protects" us from. It's getting harder for people to keep their dirty little secrets.
...Which is a damned good thing, seeing how so very MANY dirty little secrets there are out there. One of the biggest is how the world of journalism has betrayed the trust of society, and TOTALLY fucked up their job.
Friday, October 17, 2014
WHO are you? (doot-doot, doot DOOT)
No, I haven't been enjoying a Who music festival ... though it sounds like a good idea. :-) I'm "reacting" again, to another silly blog-post, of someone who is no longer on my list. -->
Somebody who USED to produce good work has not only gone all libertarian on us, he's one of those narcissistic types who think what works for HIM should by-god be good enough for the rest of us! And he's been listening to audiobooks.
Now, people who write nonfiction often have their little agendas, and they're not proven to be RIGHT, just because they wrote a thesis on the subject and think their wisdom should be shared with the world. Whether their references and the conclusions they draw from them are actually VALID is always a grey area. Those who read such books also bring their own opinions and draw their own conclusions, so these FURTHER inferences that are drawn are probably even farther afield....
It seems that Native Americans not only hunted, they FARMED (and why the man didn't seem to realize this before is the mystery...). Bingo! We should all eat squashes and tubers ... but let's all ignore the fact that they also grew maize and legumes -- after all, them thaings ain't HEALTHY!
[sigh]
Are your ancestors Navajo? ...or Hadza? ...or Kitavan? ...or Inuit? No? Then why the hell do you consider THEIR diets and lifestyles ideal for YOU?
WHO ARE YOU? Where did your people come from ... and i'm not talking about two hundred years ago. What did your ancestors live on, a couple of thousand years ago? Five thousand years? Ten thousand years ... when a small proportion of Old World people BEGAN farming? I dunno about you all, but my people have been in the British Isles and northern Europe for a helluva long time. I doubt seriously that they "enjoyed" the products of agriculture nearly as long as people with a Near East or Mediterranean genetic background.
Not only do we have different genetics (and epigenetics) to deal with, there is a gamut of hormonal statuses amongst us, different tolerances when it comes to FODMAPs, histamine/tyramine/salicylates, different colon lengths, different levels of nutrient absorption ... ad infinitum! HOW in the gods names are we all expected to thrive, identically, on one perfect diet?
If Mr Youknowwho finds the Perfect Health diet a good fit for himself, whooptidoo! That's terrific, and I wish him well ... or at least good-riddance. But why is he making a grand pronouncement that THIS is THE perfect diet, and he was wrong before? Does he not come across as implying, "i was a low-carber before, and I was wrong. You are a low-carber now, so YOU ARE WRONG"???
If I had his lack of physical limitations, i'd probably indulge in more of the fruits of the season too, but i'm stuck with a much less-forgiving body. To be well, i'm much better off forgoing some of his highly-touted plant-origin foods. "Meat meat meat" actually takes the strain off many of my systems, and I DON'T suffer from "glucose deficiency" ... whatever that is. I DON'T get symptoms of stress from making my liver do its job. I DON'T see any sign whatsoever that my thyroid is not happy.
It's when I take in too much vegetable matter that I feel crummy. I don't care if every hunter-gatherer the world has ever seen lived on tubers -- some (like cassava and sweet potatoes) give me problems, so I WON'T eat them. Nor some other fruits and vegetables. My ancestors probably ate a meat-and-seafood-heavy diet, and guess what -- that suits me just fine in OUR times.
"So tell me, who are YOU?"
Somebody who USED to produce good work has not only gone all libertarian on us, he's one of those narcissistic types who think what works for HIM should by-god be good enough for the rest of us! And he's been listening to audiobooks.
Now, people who write nonfiction often have their little agendas, and they're not proven to be RIGHT, just because they wrote a thesis on the subject and think their wisdom should be shared with the world. Whether their references and the conclusions they draw from them are actually VALID is always a grey area. Those who read such books also bring their own opinions and draw their own conclusions, so these FURTHER inferences that are drawn are probably even farther afield....
It seems that Native Americans not only hunted, they FARMED (and why the man didn't seem to realize this before is the mystery...). Bingo! We should all eat squashes and tubers ... but let's all ignore the fact that they also grew maize and legumes -- after all, them thaings ain't HEALTHY!
[sigh]
Are your ancestors Navajo? ...or Hadza? ...or Kitavan? ...or Inuit? No? Then why the hell do you consider THEIR diets and lifestyles ideal for YOU?
WHO ARE YOU? Where did your people come from ... and i'm not talking about two hundred years ago. What did your ancestors live on, a couple of thousand years ago? Five thousand years? Ten thousand years ... when a small proportion of Old World people BEGAN farming? I dunno about you all, but my people have been in the British Isles and northern Europe for a helluva long time. I doubt seriously that they "enjoyed" the products of agriculture nearly as long as people with a Near East or Mediterranean genetic background.
Not only do we have different genetics (and epigenetics) to deal with, there is a gamut of hormonal statuses amongst us, different tolerances when it comes to FODMAPs, histamine/tyramine/salicylates, different colon lengths, different levels of nutrient absorption ... ad infinitum! HOW in the gods names are we all expected to thrive, identically, on one perfect diet?
If Mr Youknowwho finds the Perfect Health diet a good fit for himself, whooptidoo! That's terrific, and I wish him well ... or at least good-riddance. But why is he making a grand pronouncement that THIS is THE perfect diet, and he was wrong before? Does he not come across as implying, "i was a low-carber before, and I was wrong. You are a low-carber now, so YOU ARE WRONG"???
If I had his lack of physical limitations, i'd probably indulge in more of the fruits of the season too, but i'm stuck with a much less-forgiving body. To be well, i'm much better off forgoing some of his highly-touted plant-origin foods. "Meat meat meat" actually takes the strain off many of my systems, and I DON'T suffer from "glucose deficiency" ... whatever that is. I DON'T get symptoms of stress from making my liver do its job. I DON'T see any sign whatsoever that my thyroid is not happy.
It's when I take in too much vegetable matter that I feel crummy. I don't care if every hunter-gatherer the world has ever seen lived on tubers -- some (like cassava and sweet potatoes) give me problems, so I WON'T eat them. Nor some other fruits and vegetables. My ancestors probably ate a meat-and-seafood-heavy diet, and guess what -- that suits me just fine in OUR times.
"So tell me, who are YOU?"
Thursday, October 16, 2014
meanwhile ... you got older
You can find some really nonsensical claims about low-carb diets online. They "wreck your thyroid" (untrue), or "bring on menopause" (also untrue), or "cause you to be more carb-sensitive" (true in the short term, till your system switches the enzymes it's making...).
Cuz ya know what DOES cause some of those things? GETTING OLDER. While you were living life and trying to get thinner and fitter, time kept a-marchin' on. This was a point that Jackie Eberstein (Dr Atkins' assistant) made on our first LC cruise, which impressed J and me so much. People used to complain to the doc that they had a hard time losing like they used to and often had to be reminded that -- hey, you're NOT twenty-five anymore! You're not even ... the age you were, five years ago (duh). Time makes a HUGE difference, especially to women.
Even though people in the fat-loss field are fond of discussing hormones in isolation, not only do a lot of them do more than one thing, they also do their jobs in combination with each other. And the estrogens are VERY fond of exerting their nasty sneaky ways on various glands -- thyroids, for a prime example.
Whereas estrogen acts to positively modulate the behaviors of insulin and cortisol in our youth, when it starts to diminish (beginning in one's THIRTIES), those two "weight-gain bullies" run amok ... and it grows worse as time progresses.
This is why the vast majority of middle-aged women in the west are overweight. EVERYTHING mainstream sources tell us to do is counterproductive: starve ourselves on restricted quantities of healthywholegrains, and get lots of exercise! RAISE them cortisol levels!!!
NO.
Middle-aged women are more carb-sensitive than they used to be. That's an endocrinological fact. We each have our own tolerance limits, depending on how our genetics predispose us and how much we've pushed our limits in the past. No matter how high or low it was before, it's less NOW.
We're more easily stressed, too, for the same reasons. Stress not only makes us less happy, it encourages visceral fat storage, which is never a good thing. No matter how easy-going (or not) you were in the past, under the same conditions you're MORE stressed NOW.
Do yourself a favor -- admit you have to live your life a little differently than you used to. You don't have to "take it easy" but you should probably take it easiER as time goes by. You don't have to go full-on low-carb (if you still tolerate them decently) ... but you should probably go lowER. Realize that you need to be a little more careful, because (at the same fitness level) you can now injure more easily. You possibly need more protein, as well as more vitamins and minerals (or more absorbable forms of them), because you don't absorb them as well as you used to.
None of us WANT to acknowledge that we're on a downhill slope, but when you're at my place in life, the fact is forced upon you. It's just the way it IS. "Aging well" is one of the main reasons I do the things I do -- watch my carbs, watch the Neolithic Agents of Disease, watch my stress levels.... I KNOW i'm not the physical specimen I was at twenty, or thirty, or even forty. But at sixty, I anticipate being a better specimen than I was, before I started all these amendments!
Cuz ya know what DOES cause some of those things? GETTING OLDER. While you were living life and trying to get thinner and fitter, time kept a-marchin' on. This was a point that Jackie Eberstein (Dr Atkins' assistant) made on our first LC cruise, which impressed J and me so much. People used to complain to the doc that they had a hard time losing like they used to and often had to be reminded that -- hey, you're NOT twenty-five anymore! You're not even ... the age you were, five years ago (duh). Time makes a HUGE difference, especially to women.
Even though people in the fat-loss field are fond of discussing hormones in isolation, not only do a lot of them do more than one thing, they also do their jobs in combination with each other. And the estrogens are VERY fond of exerting their nasty sneaky ways on various glands -- thyroids, for a prime example.
Whereas estrogen acts to positively modulate the behaviors of insulin and cortisol in our youth, when it starts to diminish (beginning in one's THIRTIES), those two "weight-gain bullies" run amok ... and it grows worse as time progresses.
This is why the vast majority of middle-aged women in the west are overweight. EVERYTHING mainstream sources tell us to do is counterproductive: starve ourselves on restricted quantities of healthywholegrains, and get lots of exercise! RAISE them cortisol levels!!!
NO.
Middle-aged women are more carb-sensitive than they used to be. That's an endocrinological fact. We each have our own tolerance limits, depending on how our genetics predispose us and how much we've pushed our limits in the past. No matter how high or low it was before, it's less NOW.
We're more easily stressed, too, for the same reasons. Stress not only makes us less happy, it encourages visceral fat storage, which is never a good thing. No matter how easy-going (or not) you were in the past, under the same conditions you're MORE stressed NOW.
Do yourself a favor -- admit you have to live your life a little differently than you used to. You don't have to "take it easy" but you should probably take it easiER as time goes by. You don't have to go full-on low-carb (if you still tolerate them decently) ... but you should probably go lowER. Realize that you need to be a little more careful, because (at the same fitness level) you can now injure more easily. You possibly need more protein, as well as more vitamins and minerals (or more absorbable forms of them), because you don't absorb them as well as you used to.
None of us WANT to acknowledge that we're on a downhill slope, but when you're at my place in life, the fact is forced upon you. It's just the way it IS. "Aging well" is one of the main reasons I do the things I do -- watch my carbs, watch the Neolithic Agents of Disease, watch my stress levels.... I KNOW i'm not the physical specimen I was at twenty, or thirty, or even forty. But at sixty, I anticipate being a better specimen than I was, before I started all these amendments!
Friday, October 10, 2014
Halloween -- THE DEAD LIVE!
It's Tribute Day in Tess's world!
[HUGE grin]
I'm still at my daughter's house in Texas, so don't have access to my extensive collection of DVDs and VHS tapes ("boughten" as well as copied from television over the last three decades). If Netflix or Amazon prime don't offer them, i have to either do without or buy them (adding to L's collection). So, wanting to share The Raven (a Roger Corman flick) with the grandchildren, i went ahead and ordered it. It came yesterday....
The outstanding feature that a lot of DVDs offer is the "commentary" opportunity, in which students of filmography discuss interesting aspects of careers and production notes, and sometimes legendary film-makers themselves comment on these iconic works of art. I have learned a great deal more about the fine points of movie messages than i ever picked up myself, because NOBODY can have the range of side-experience that can illuminate literature (and i consider film to be a visual form of literature) with complete understanding.
Cavorting about on the stage in this movie are four consumate artists, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Jack Nicholson in one of his early roles. All i can say is ... WOW. Indeed -- ARTISTS. When one only watches certain popular films without knowing anything about the actors' range of experience, one easily takes their talents for granted. An awful lot of modern acting just does not achieve this kind of mastery.*
The Raven is a COMEDY. World-class actors making ART out of a rather ridiculous farce....
Today, we are fortunate in a myriad of ways! One of them is to be able to preserve PERFORMANCE art -- and it's only been around for about a hundred years. Have you ever wondered what it was like to SEE AND HEAR Shadespeare performing his own works? Beethoven playing his own compositions? We can only imagine and marvel.
But we CAN experience amazing talents like these actors, and musicians of the quality of Ian Anderson, Keith Emerson, Rachmaninov, Perlman, etc. It's a waste of an important resource if we DON'T, and the neglect of an important aspect of our own mental capacities.
Thanks to "modern" recording capabilities, great people who have left the earth-plane can still be appreciated in all their glory. :-) ...and Halloween seems to be a most appropriate time to make observation of it!
________
* my grandchildren watch a good deal of the Disney Channel -- GAG. read line, mug for the camera, wait for laugh-track fill-in.... this is not acting -- at least, it's not art. even i can perform at this level.
[HUGE grin]
I'm still at my daughter's house in Texas, so don't have access to my extensive collection of DVDs and VHS tapes ("boughten" as well as copied from television over the last three decades). If Netflix or Amazon prime don't offer them, i have to either do without or buy them (adding to L's collection). So, wanting to share The Raven (a Roger Corman flick) with the grandchildren, i went ahead and ordered it. It came yesterday....
The outstanding feature that a lot of DVDs offer is the "commentary" opportunity, in which students of filmography discuss interesting aspects of careers and production notes, and sometimes legendary film-makers themselves comment on these iconic works of art. I have learned a great deal more about the fine points of movie messages than i ever picked up myself, because NOBODY can have the range of side-experience that can illuminate literature (and i consider film to be a visual form of literature) with complete understanding.
Cavorting about on the stage in this movie are four consumate artists, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Jack Nicholson in one of his early roles. All i can say is ... WOW. Indeed -- ARTISTS. When one only watches certain popular films without knowing anything about the actors' range of experience, one easily takes their talents for granted. An awful lot of modern acting just does not achieve this kind of mastery.*
The Raven is a COMEDY. World-class actors making ART out of a rather ridiculous farce....
Today, we are fortunate in a myriad of ways! One of them is to be able to preserve PERFORMANCE art -- and it's only been around for about a hundred years. Have you ever wondered what it was like to SEE AND HEAR Shadespeare performing his own works? Beethoven playing his own compositions? We can only imagine and marvel.
But we CAN experience amazing talents like these actors, and musicians of the quality of Ian Anderson, Keith Emerson, Rachmaninov, Perlman, etc. It's a waste of an important resource if we DON'T, and the neglect of an important aspect of our own mental capacities.
Thanks to "modern" recording capabilities, great people who have left the earth-plane can still be appreciated in all their glory. :-) ...and Halloween seems to be a most appropriate time to make observation of it!
________
* my grandchildren watch a good deal of the Disney Channel -- GAG. read line, mug for the camera, wait for laugh-track fill-in.... this is not acting -- at least, it's not art. even i can perform at this level.
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