The Idea of North -- GG's Winnipeg-to-Churchill MN wilderness train in a few weeks! Polar bears! Aurora! The Adventure of a Lifetime

SVP clicquez le fiche pour le plus grande

Hi et salut hallo f_minorites,

Been busy lately, pecked about the ankles by angry ducks ... so I'm sorry if I haven't posted much lately. But I faithfully read (almost) every post.

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Between the last week of September and the first week or two of October, (mostly adolescent male) polar bears will make their annual migration around and through the tiny Hudson Bay grain shipping port town of Churchill, Manitoba Canada.

I guess rich pervs can comfortably fly there from Toronto or Montreal, but Normal Human Beings catch a train (diesel, 'cause you're going Way Off The Electric Grid) in Winnipeg and head North through the vast gorgeous Canadian forest wilderness for 2.5 days until -- far beyond the Tree Line, in Arctic permafrost tundra -- it finally reaches Churchill.

(Like all beach towns, you'll be just a block or two from the beach, which is the astonishingly otherworldly Hudson Bay.)

One Human Being who rode this train there and back again was Glenn Gould. In 1967 the CBC asked what he'd like to contribute to a big Anniversary, and GG took a tape recorder and talked to the passengers riding this train to the Canadian North.

The result -- after GG's revolutionary mixing -- was his first radio documentary, "The Idea of North."

(If you've never heard TIoN, a little web shopping or library surfing could get all three radiodocs to your ears in a few days.)

It's my wish that the world-unique train trip, the wilderness, and the annual polar bear migration might seduce just 1 or 2 or maybe 3 addled f_minorites to investigate buying a round-trip seat or sleep box on This Amazing Train.

I promise any GG fan addled and irresponsible enough (as I once was) only The Adventure of a Lifetime. I promise nothing more than that.

(Except up-close-and-personal encounters with polar bears, polar bear warning signs, barred doors up and down main street to keep the polar bears from whacking tourists ...)

For a week you'll be Less Than No. 1 on the Food Chain. Running shoes are much better than great wilderness boots.

For whacks like me, this is one of the most famous train journeys on the planet, the subject not just of TIoN, but of documentaries that have peppered TV for decades.

Likely, you've waited too long to book this famous trip -- but it's been my experience that if you want a journey bad enough, and you whine, and bribe, and lie, and wheedle, and then just show up waving cash, they usually find space for you and your backpack.

Or for you and a pal, and both your backpacks.

The crammed snack bar car -- this is a heavy-drinking frontier train, affordable transportation for the people in these parts -- is possibly the most interesting cage of colorful people I've ever spent hours in.

You could semi-officialize something This Train has never had -- a living, travelling memorial to GG's 1967 trip, what it meant to him, and what it did to his creative life. By just chatting with passengers, or lending them flash drives of TIoN, f_minor could treat Glenn to another train ride to Churchill. Glenn made the Canadian Arctic his own just as much as Toronto.

The buzz is that Churchill is the world's hottest, most active spot to view the Aurora. It sure looked astonishing to me. The Native-Canadians are mostly Inuit, some Swampy Cree, they have their own (missionary-introduced) alphabet, and if you are lucky and courteous, they will share some of their experience with you.

The food's very interesting, some of it stunningly delicious, and unobtainable in civilized regions. (Calling Churchill "civilized" would be a stretch.)

In my Amazing Adventure, there was no hint, no rumor, no whisper that the polar bear -- the largest and best hunter-carnivore on Earth, mostly it hunts seals on winter ice -- might be coming to the end of its millennia as undisputed ruler of the circumpolar Arctic. The anamolous numbers of polar bear drownings hadn't yet been reported by US federal scientists.

GG's earlier trip ditto -- everyone assumed the great and dangerous wild polar bear would be there for humans to marvel at forever.

So now, as you ponder a wildly irresponsible and impulsive adventure, there's an added urgency. We're looking at a future, some now think in our lifetimes, when there'll still be polar bears ... but only in the world's zoos. As the polar ice melts, the wild bears will drown trying to swim to the next ice cake.

If you are completely impulsive and irresponsible -- bring me back photos and souvenirs, send me a postcard!

Bob

Massachusetts USA

"Of all our regrets, the coldest and most empty are of temptations we have successfully resisted."

-- James Branch Cabell

(from memory, but that's pretty close)

The USA -- we're Number 1 in slow, undependable, crappy, smelly, uncomfortable trains! All aboard! / Send Joseph H. Boardman to prison

Click on images to enlarge.

LandscapeWindscreen has left a new comment on your post "1st Day Issue / Postalo Vleeptron: Bob & S.W.M.B.O...":
Oooh is that the train that comes down from Montreal ? Been on that one from NYC to DC, but that was ages ago….but this tells me that it is still difficult to get to DC by plane…..

I had a slight hangover from a bar visit in Manhatten the night before and behind me sat two nice elderly ladies from Quebec happily chattering away in french, rightly thinking that 99 % of the passengers would not get what they say. Oh, those bloody americans, no taste, horrible trains, and even the clouds look different, but in a tone that was far from mean. Shortly after we left NYC I took a nap, while the two ladies went on about this and that in their strange accent, which is quite difficult
to understand even if your french is below average, became the ambient soundscape of my catn[a]p.

Suddenly I felt a bump behind me and I woke up. Of course the ladies apologized for waking me up, they said they were very sorry. So I told them in polite french that it did not matter and everything was all right. They were a bit shocked and in their surprise (I got almost every word they had said about "those bloody americans") they asked me how come my french was so good. I told them where I come from and for some time we had a nice chat. I forgot what they wanted to do in DC, but I have fond memories of that train ride.

******************

I hate commercial airline flying, I hate everything about it, from entering the airport, the paranoia of the post-9/11 security, the strange radiation exposures, the frothing killer-sniffer dogs and the SWAT police, the crappy overpriced food, the ... well, I could go on and on, but I just hate it.

Certainly I hate every aspect of it in the USA and everywhere in the Western Hemisphere I've had to fly.

I don't hate flying itself -- and in fact I love flying in screwy little fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, I love crazy straight-up-straight-down STOL planes. I love single-engine or twin-engine propeller planes. And the screwy places I like to visit, these are the kind of planes you got to fly, so it's all a wonderful Flying Adventure to me.

What's the best airplane trip? A flight where half the passengers quietly make the sign of the Cross
and whisper a prayer on landing and takeoff. I've been on a lot of those flights -- and if they asked me to pay $25 extra for a Prayer Flight, I would.

It's different in Yerp. The trains are great, dependable, and even in the Eastern Zones, the trains may suck, but they're really interesting and real old -- so it's not just train travel, it's often Time
Travel too.

I don't think I've ever flown anywhere IN Europe. Oh, okay, after Schiphol, one short connecting flight to Berlin Templehof (opened 1923, closed 2008). I only fly when I need to cross a big ocean from continent to continent. (And once I said screw that and crossed the Atlantic on Communist Polish Ocean Liner TSS Stefan Batory, London to Montreal. That was a total blast!)

You can't SEE where you are from an airplane! You can't see the land, the country, the roadsigns, the people, the cars, the cows, the horses, the sheep, the architecture, you can't see the hectares of gorgeous tulips. All you LEARN from commercial flying is the insides of big airports. (Schiphol's my favorite, I'd happily spend the day in Schiphol even if I wasn't flying anywhere; Keflavik is always a big treat,)

Okay, so what's left of my hometown family is in the Washington DC area. And I live in western Massachusetts (not near Boston).

Amtrak is the USA's quasi-governmental passenger rail system. Its charter for the last 30 years has been to destroy and discontinue passenger rail, and discourage people from riding the few crappy trains that survive. (VIA does the same shameful, pathetic job in Canada.)

But by a very happy set of accidental coincidences, the Northeast Corridor passenger train line -- roughly Boston-NYC-Washington DC -- is the USA's ONLY dependable, reasonably modern, comfortable, well-maintained and even profit-making (!) passenger rail route.

We get up early (no commuter traffic, highway all to ourselves) and drive south 2.5 hours and park at a very efficient, safe big garage next to the New Haven train station. (It's safe because the neighborhood is seedy and creepy, but the train station is right across the street from New Haven
Police Headquarters -- the place is infested with hundreds of uniform cops and cop cars.)

The big old Greek Revival train station has been cleaned and sandblasted and made safe and efficient as you wait for your train. If you pay top dollar, you ride the Acela train -- very modern (Euro-made) engines and passenger cars, that are the fastest passenger trains in the USA today. This one track line has been upgraded and well-maintained, so it's safe to run the Acela at high speeds -- the warning sign above is one of the zones where Acela zips along at 150 mph = 241 kph.

Big-city airports are typically 20 miles / 32 km from downtown. So after you park at one airport in the
middle of nowhere, you fly to another airport in the middle of nowhere, and take some kind of expensive taxi or bus or light rail line to your downtown city destination.

But the Northeast Corridor passenger rail route is a relic from the 19th century, and its big stations were the grand architectural centerpieces of the big cities. So today, the USA's high-speed (and slower, cheaper) trains can regularly get you from Downtown to Downtown in a time comparable to,
sometimes even faster than the same trip by commercial airliner.

Then there's weather. Bad weather may not shut down airports, but it regularly slows down airport operations and delays flights for hours -- in blizzards, for a day or two. Trains may have to throttle back a bit during bad weather, but they keep moving up and down the Corridor far more dependably.

Amtrak's current President is Joseph H. Boardman. I know a lot about his passenger trains, but I don't know much about Mr. Boardman. I sincerely believe, however, that after appointing an independent prosecutor and impanelling a federal grand jury, Mr. Boardman should be sentenced to 3 or 4 years in one of those nice white-collar "country club" federal penitentiaries. Not so much for his crimes, but as a re-education experience, and when he gets out of prison, he can continue to be Amtrak's president -- but with a New Attitude, and a Much Sharpened Sense of what his proper duties toward train passengers should be.

Oh -- and wherever the top executives of Amtrak must travel, by a new law (Bob's Law) they MUST travel only by Amtrak trains, and NEVER in 1st Class. If an Amtrak official must travel from Washington DC (Amtrak HQ is in DC Union Station) to Oakland, California, she or he MUST travel by Amtrak train.
**************

Ah, you rode The Montrealer, and so did I a few times, and what a wonderful train when it went where it claimed it went!

It was also special to me because for a few years it made a quick depot stop, jump on, jump off, about 15 miles / 24 kliks from my house, a 20-minute drive, and no traffic because it stopped here in the middle of night, oh around midnight. No trouble parking at the Amherst or Northampton depots -- hell, almost nobody ever there. 

In Amherst the depot is a mile from Amherst College, one of USA's -- well, it's one of the Ivy League private colleges, the kind of place parents commit child murder to bump their kid up the student acceptance list. So if people there at all, they're smart (or rich) college students. If money and tweed and really nice haircuts can make you handsome and pretty, they're as handsome and pretty as money can make a guy or a grrlie. Even tastefully. It's quite a depot. puts a smile on your face, eavesdropping is very cool.

As far as I can figure out, The Montrealer exists so New York City people who want REALLY GREAT SKIING can zip up to Quebec in about 12 hours -- the trains I rode often were shoulder-to-shoulder downhill skiers. And that made it an Unusual Train. You learned a lot of stuff, and in a lot of lingos. A lot of good stories were exchanged.

I think the Montrealer travels north through the Adirondack Mountain Chain Old-Growth Forest, full of pristine blue glacier lakes, every one a full-color picture postcard. If not, take the train that does.

I hop on in Albany-Rennselear or Saratoga NY statem, both new modern red-brick well-architected and very functional train passnger terminals -- new depots of the 21st Century that Work.

***********

When I took that Big Train Canada Walkabout a few years ago, I chatted up a couple, married, maybe a young-ish 50. They were from Wales, maybe Cornwall. They were bright and attentive and were having the adventure of a lifetime on trains in the USA and Canada.

But they were very geography-challenged and history-challenged. They had a fuzzy memory of taking a class in school that mentioned Canada and Quebec, but that's all they knew. They didn't know a word of French, and now, 4 hours before the train stopped in Montreal, they were getting more and more alarmed to find themselves in a French-speaking land. Thomas Cook hadn't told them that when they got to Quebec (formerly New France), TLM was speaking francaise seullement.

 Or maybe Thomas Cook DID tell them, but they didn't read that paragraph.

Montreal is also a great Gare -- I rank it with Helsinki's train station as Transportation Treasures.

We all schlepped off the train and toward the Main Hall, and when I got to the Info desk, there were 2
uniformed VIA women, and I asked them "SVP, ou est l'Hotel Reine Elizabeth?" and they smiled and pointed me to a nearby escalator, (My hotel is a skyscraper right above the Montreal Gare.)

The Welsh couple had overheard, and the guy asked me a nervous little joke about suddenly switching gears to another language. He was just a little startled and confused. And clearly needed to get a more accurate assessment of his and his wife's new situation. 

When in Roma ... that sort of thing.

I sort of sighed tristement and said 

Listen, uhhh, you're in the middle of a Real Big Really Old Hatred Zone. In the '70s they were using machine guns and explosives. And all the hate -- le Hain, merci -- is aimed at people who just speak English / Anglais.


Then I told him that he and his wife had a Choice: They could either have the most wonderful, delicious, happy holiday, with smiles and courtesy everywhere they went.

Or they could spend their time in Quebec surrounded by people who hated them, wished them nothing but trouble, and hoped they would fall down a flight of stairs and break a long bone, or get food poisoning and diarrhea. If they wanted food, people would sell them artificially overpriced 2nd- class food, or worse.

But all the Welsh tourists had to do to get the Happy Quebec Holiday was use the few words of French they remembered from school -- merci, ou est ... bonjour, combien, pas de quoi, etc. They could pronounce it terribly, didn't matter.

But if they demanded English Only they were demanding a shitty holiday in Quebec. Maybe even a dangerous holiday in Quebec.

The guy listened carefully and seemed to get it.

1st Day Issue / Postalo Vleeptron: Bob & S.W.M.B.O. ride the train from New Haven to DC

Please click stamp to enlarge. Thanks.

S.W.M.B.O. and I just drove to New Haven, Connecticut and took Amtrak south to Washington DC Union Station, then the Metro Red Line to see my brother & his Sweetie in Silver Spring. (The ticket machines for the DC Metro give you change in $1 coins!)

The Amtrak Downeaster -- from Boston to Portland, Maine -- has plans to extend north to Freeport (where L.L. Bean is) and Brunswick, where Bowdoin College is.

1st Day Issue / Tierra de los Sueños: Jeremiah Horrocks first to predict & observe Transit of Venus across face of Sun

Please click stamp to enlarge.

Encourage your bright youth to apply to 

Emmanuel College, Cambridge University UK.

the Level of Hell that awaiteth the nerd kreepazoid who infected my e-mail with malware / Penn State forgot to microwave Girl Scouts / Will we still be here ... tomorrow?

yo R -- 

 

ah fooey my e-mail got infected with some creepy malware which sent itself to everybody in my address book.

 

Ignore anything from me rcvd in the last week. If you click on it, Bulgarians will hose up your life savings, if you were foolish enough to put them on-line rather than stuff them in your mattress. (The last few years, savings interest rate from banks is about the same as interest rates from mattresses.)

 

Meanwhile Cynthia (who seems to be better at this stuff than I am) says she's disinfected my e-mail.

 

Dante never had a computer. It falls to me to describe the Level of Hell reserved for creeps who write malware and infect innocent computers with it. One such guy just pulled 30 months in federal prison -- but that's just his Earthly punishment. I'm talking about what awaits malware jerks for Eternity.

 

Natch, let me know if you get any further suspicious stuff from my account.

 

Oh, remember that Cold War Elvis Draft thing? My older brother M**** managed to squeeze himself an Air Force Reserve slot and spent 7 weekend warrior years as a fireman at Andrews AFB. He got called to active duty during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the night before he was to report, he and all his lowlife pals and palettes got sloshed at their fave bar and re-wrote the lyrics to the juke box smash hit: "Will we still be here / tomorrow?"

 

Wow! Penn State is still playing football! What do you have to do to earn the NCAA Death Penalty, microwave Girl Scouts?

 

B

after huge protests, Hong Kong schools back down from mainland-style China patriotism classes

The Associated Press
(USA newswire)
Saturday 8 September 2012

Hong Kong drops plans
for Chinese patriotism classes

by Kelvin Chan

HONG KONG (AP) -- Hong Kong officials backed down Saturday on plans to make students take Chinese patriotism classes following a week of protests in the former British colony sparked by fears of pro-Beijing "brainwashing."

The semiautonomous Chinese city's leader, Leung Chun-ying, said it would be up to schools to decide whether to hold the classes. They were to have become a mandatory subject in 2015 after a three-year voluntary period.

Public anger over the classes has been growing for months. Many feared they were a ploy by Beijing authorities to indoctrinate the city's young into unquestioning support of China's Communist Party, though Leung and other senior officials denied it.

China regained control of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997 after more than a century of colonial rule, but the city has been allowed to retain a high degree of autonomy, a separate legal system and civil liberties not seen in mainland China, such as freedom of speech.

Leung's retreat follows a week of protests by thousands in front of government headquarters coinciding with the start of a new school year. Organizers said 120,000 took part on Friday evening, though police put the number at 36,000, local news reports said.

The decision comes a day before elections for the city's legislature. Sunday's vote will be the first time the public will be able to choose more than half the seats. Deepening opposition to the education plans could have undermined support for pro-Beijing candidates.

The protesters worried the new subject would be an attempt to indoctrinate the city's young with nationalist education classes similar to ones used in schools all over China to inculcate support for the Communist government.

The fears rose after a pro-Beijing education group published a pamphlet earlier this year extolling the virtues of one-party rule. The government stressed that the booklet, called "The China Model," was not part of designated teaching material.

According to curriculum guidelines, students would learn in the classes about China's political leaders, the contributions they have made and the difficulties and challenges they face. They would also learn how to "speak cautiously," practice self-discipline and get along well with others in a rational and respectful way.

The controversy is the latest sign of increasing discomfort with mainland China's growing influence on the city. Hong Kongers have also been perturbed about stunted democratic development and an influx of wealthy mainlanders buying up property and driving up prices.
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Sally Cruikshank's animation "Quasi at the Quakadero"

Click stamp to enlarge.

A rare stamp from the reclusive All-Women Planet Mollyringwald, honoring Sally Cruikshank's 1975 animated short "Quasi at the Quakadero." Click HERE to view and hear the remarkable animated short.

team sports builds character / Notre Dame football radio announcer calls for more criminals on the football team

 Click image to enlarge.

It's Sports Time on Vleeptron!
All the Sports from Vleeptron!
We've got the latest Qx'ii scores!
All the games from the Dwingeloo League!
Dogfighting, fish-shooting,
cockfighting too!
Bare-knuckle boxing from 1902!
A fifth of our Sports
all take place in the Zoo!
Get your Sports on Vleeptron!
Get your Sports on Vleeptron!

* * * * * * *

Bloomberg News Service
USA newswire
Thursday 30 August 2012
 
Notre Dame Analyst Pinkett
Suspended After ‘Criminals’ Comment

by Scott Soshnick

University of Notre Dame football radio analyst Allen Pinkett was suspended for at least the season opener after he said the team needs "criminals" to win.

Don Criqui and Jeff Jeffers will handle the broadcast, according to a statement from IMG. The Fighting Irish open the season against the U.S. Naval Academy in Dublin, Ireland, on Saturday 1 September.

"The event deserves to be free of distraction," Andrew Giangola, an IMG Notre Dame Radio Network spokesman, said in the statement.

Further decisions on Pinkett, a two-time All-American running back at Notre Dame in the 1980s, will be made at a later date, according to the statement, which didn’t give details.

Pinkett said during a radio interview this week that successful teams need a few bad citizens. He spoke after Notre Dame suspended two players, including leading rusher Cierre Wood, for two games for violating team rules.
 
"I mean, that’s how Ohio State used to win all the time," he said. "They would have two or three guys that were criminals. That just adds to the chemistry of the team. I think Notre Dame is growing because maybe they have some guys that are doing something worthy of a suspension, which creates edge on the football team. You can’t have a football team full of choir boys."

Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick called the remarks "nonsense."
 
"Of course, Allen does not speak for the university, but we could not disagree more with his observation," Swarbrick said.

Notre Dame was 8-5 last season.

Bloomberg Radio is the broadcast home for Notre Dame football in New York.

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Bob's down with the clown yo / female Team USA sports enthusiasts offer to castrate Vleeptron Dude / not insane / Romney is not a weasel / Vote Larouche!

Click on t-shirt & gang sign to enlarge.

e-mail from, and back atcha, my old Army buddy who lives in the Greater Lower Thumb Region of the USA state shaped like a right-hand mitten so you can point to the palm of your hand to show where you live
 
Every former soldier ends up with an old pal named Joe Schlobladewski who phones long-distance once a year (often inspired by alcohol) to confuse & dismay the veteran's wife and children. I have designated myself R**'s Joe Schlobladewski.

R** has a wife and three interesting, accomplished children. One (male) is a rapper and Graphic Novel (modern name for Comic Book, and they don't cost 10 cents anymore either) artist; another (female) was a regional college water polo champ.

Go Blue! (My late father-in-law wore a sweatshirt that said


HARVARD
THE MICHIGAN OF THE EAST

) and okay, one time i was doing my laundry in a laundromat and there was a guy with a sweatshirt that said [see illustration above]. For 20 minutes I focused all my dimly-remembered Hebrew skills on his chest and finally meekly asked the fellow: "Meshugineh?" (Hebrew for Insane.)

He smiled broadly. 

"Good guess, but no! MICHIGAN!"

**********

----- Original Message -----

From: R** B****

To: Bob Merkin

Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2012 11:09 AM

Subject: ICP?

Bob,
Got your [SNAILMAIL] letter with the real US postage Stewie’s Big Adventure Commemorative Stamp on it yesterday. Cool.

I personally do not know much about the Insane Clown Posse. I had heard about them for some time but that was it.

The Free Press story on Vleeptron was the most info I have had.

I will see if T** can tell you anything more. I don’t think he sees them as serious rappers . . . Whatever that means.

Pizza Q: It’s a special sand blend or something.

 

[from my snailmail with the USPS Stewie stamp]:

P.S. We watched USA women's water polo. Okay, so I'm late, so I'm slow, so I was ignorant -- but I'm a fan! This is quite the amazing sport!
 

PizzaQ: Why aren't Olympic women's beach volleyball players covered with sand all over?  

We watched so much of the Olympics for those 2 weeks. Missed out on all the political talk shows. Ha.

So how was Romney as governor of your fair state?
He seems like a weasel to me.

 Ron

 **********

As I desperately searched through a long lifetime of memories for someone, anyone, who might know stuff about the Caucasian-American rap scene in the Greater Lower Thumb region, suddenly there was an intense flare of sparking neurons.

But if T** says "They suck," sobeit.

But if he has any info or critical commentary re ICP and the Juggalos, please tell him Joe Schlobladewki a.k.a. Vleeptron Dude would be appreciative. (Tell him if he e-mails me anything, I'll be happy to redact all clues to his identity when I post it on Vleeptron.)

Okay, so I don't get to as many Rainbow Family of Living Light Gatherings and Vans Warped Tours as I used to (some Smith College Radio Babes took pity on old Bob and dragged me to a Rave, that was Very Odd), but I started reading about this ICP/Juggalo crap and I was horrified to realize that for 13 fucking years, thousands of Youths & Not-So-Youths have been roaming the Midwest, earning an authentic FBI gang designation, and pathetic old Out-Of-The-Loop Bob had never heard Word 1 about this crap.

So either I demand to know more and I demand to buy the t-shirt from the ICP web store, or I better start gathering pamphlets for Assisted Living facilities. I am losing my grip on The Present and The Future, and I used to pride myself on seeing hordes coming soon enough to step back on the curb and avoid being violated and pillaged.

But I am reassured to learn that my trusty FBI is as sharp as it was in our day, protecting the Homeland from high-school nerds [& nerdeusses] and assistant Garden Supplies managers at Home Depot.

Look -- okay, he has utterly no reason to listen to Clueless Old Joe, but T** needs to know that in my (news) racket, anybody who can get 3000 screwballs to follow them to mud-slogged mosquito-infested state parks for 13 years in a row, and get the national law-enforcement net buzzing with FBI gang BOLOs -- such achievements deserve our respect and props.

Terribly glad you liked the Stewie stamp! Turning them into real snailmail USPS stamps was the sweetest thing a family member has EVER done for me. I was sort of embarrassed when I took the letter to the Post Office and had to ask somebody what 1st-Class now costs -- i.e., how many Stewies would I have to put on the No. 10 [envelope] before I dropped it in the slot and sent it to Ann Arbor.

The nifty USPS feature, I guess it's about 4 or 5 years old now, well it had some awkward beginnings, people were making Hitler commemoratives and hommages to Fart Gas, and the USPS roll-your-own-stamp censors were letting some of the cuter designs slip past their vigilant inspecting.

* * *

Yeah, I was already here when Romney did a stint as our Governor, and he sucked. Here's a recent Vleeptron snapshot of his (almost) achievement in office:

http://vleeptronz.blogspot.com/2012/06/mitt-romney-sneakily-gutted.html

How he got elected, well, I can only guess that the Dems that year put up an unusually sucky or detested candidate. This may be an All-Blue state, but the Dems have run some real doozies & losers, so from time to time we elect Republicans. (Vermont -- well, they're the only voters who send a Socialist to represent their desires in the U.S. Senate.)

When Teddy Kennedy died and we had to elect a new U.S. Senator, I get this phone call and a mild-mannered Youth asks me if I am all thrilled and enthused that our Attorney General, Martha Coakley, is running for the seat. I almost soiled myself -- boy, did I know Martha. As a District Attorney and then Attorney General, she has encarcerated more Non-White & teenage pot-smokers and street junkies than any racist scumbag public official in U.S. history.

"Are you kidding? Martha Coakley is the Democratic candidate? Look, buddy -- she's EVIL. I ain't voting for Martha Coakley."

The Clueless Youth got all surprised and flustered, but he recovered enough to ask me, if not Martha, who I might vote for.

"Is Lyndon Larouche running somebody? I'll vote for a Larouchie before I vote for Coakley."

(No, I didn't vote for Scott Brown, but that's how Scott Brown got his Senate seat -- I wasn't the only MA[ssachusetts] voter less than thrilled with Evil Martha.)

You say weasel, I say Romney is a dangerous pig. Ryan is (if possible) a worse & more dangerous pig.

Don't get me started, now I got to take pills to calm down.

Oh, you win the PizzaQ. Yeah, they use special sand whose grain size and texture doesn't adhere to perspiring young [female] flesh, or that's what the beach volleyball expert sitting next to Bob Costas said.

You have ended up being a lot closer to Olympic-class sport than I ever did or will. Bob the Old Kommie was pretty disgusted with the Beijing Olympics, I have trouble enjoying the triathlon when political prisoners are being tortured and their organs are being harvested too close to the stadium. Some fans of Abbey Wambach left comments on Vleeptron threatening to castrate me for giving their goddess the finger for her dumb comments

http://vleeptronz.blogspot.com/2008/04/abbey-wambach-us-soccer-olympian-shes.html

... and I will be as grateful to K*** for her opinions on these complex matters as I will be to T** for his guidance re Insane Clown Posse. (Tell her I swam, briefly, for NYU so I could sleaze out of mandatory Gym Class.)

I just think Amazing Sports Skills are not a Free Pass for Dumb.

But the London stuff didn't creep me out like the Beijing Olympics did. There was some taste and thought, and it was cool to see HRH Elizabeth II parachute out of a helicopter. The Brits don't harvest organs from the political prisoners they execute.

Well, I have to go pray now that Romney does not become our President. Hi to C**** & everyone, the talented, the creative, the champions.

Your old Army pal,

Joe Schloblowdewski

Prince Henry of Wales loses bigtime at strip billiards in Vegas, mate takes cell phone photos, sells them to TMZ / it's good to be the Prince! / 2 balls in the corner pocket / Red Star over Tuchas

.........................................Click image to enlarge.

The Los Angeles Times
(daily broadsheet, Los Angeles, California USA)
Wednesday 22 August 2012

by Rene Lynch

Prince Harry has a reputation as the playboy prince. Now there are photos to prove it -- straight from Las Vegas.

Celebrity gossip website TMZ posted photos online of Britain's most eligible bachelor naked and cavorting with at least one nude woman in what reportedly is a Las Vegas VIP suite.

In one photo, the prince uses his hands to cover his privates while a naked woman wraps her arms around his middle. In a second photo, he appears to be playfully wrestling with a woman near a pool table, and is bent over her. (TMZ placed a red star over Harry's exposed behind.)

PHOTOS: Facets of Prince Harry

The photos are apparently not in dispute. Buckingham Palace has confirmed that Harry is indeed the strapping, red-headed fellow seen in the photos. The palace is declining further comment beyond saying that "Prince Harry is on a private holiday and is returning shortly."
 
Harry has made headlines over the years for a variety of questionable incidents, including wearing a Nazi uniform at a costume party, complete with armband. He apologized for doing so.

He was in Vegas this week taking a break from his military duties. He'd already made headlines with some of his late-night Sin City activities, such as challenging Olympic gold medalist Ryan Lochte to a race -- in a pool -- as several women looked on.

TMZ says that the images were taken after Harry and some of his buddies invited a "bevy of beauties" up to his VIP suite at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino last Friday.

At this time, there appears to be little outrage over the antics. the Telegraph, however, raises the question as to whether the nude photos violate British army rules that state "social misbehavior" is unacceptable: "Military codes of conduct warn officers that they must maintain high standards of professionalism 'both on and off operations,'" the newspaper said.

Otherwise, reaction to the photos in Britain was precisely what you would expect. Very few expect much more from a handsome young man letting loose in a place like Vegas. In fact, many sounded a bit envious.

The Associated Press asked "an assortment of royal watchers and British subjects" about the photos. One construction worker was quoted as saying, "I'd be proud of him if he were my son," while another stated the obvious: "He's the prince. He can have any bird he wants!" Several women interviewed also rolled their eyes at the controversy. A child-care worker interviewed by the news service laughed at the uproar as she said: "He's a lad, for God's sake."- 30 -

best pooch-screwing & foot-shooting award of 2012 campaign / "legitimate rape" guy vows to stay in Senate race, while his own party tries to push him under a bus

Click photo to enlarge.

Hot "game-changer" campaign news from the Republic of Gilead.

============

The Associated Press
(USA newswire)
Monday 20 August 2012

GOP congressman fights 
to save Senate campaign
after rape pregnancy comments

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI -- Rep. Todd Akin fought to salvage his Senate campaign Monday, even as members of his own party turned against him and a key source of campaign funding was cut off in outrage over the Missouri congressman’s comments that women are able to prevent pregnancies in cases of "legitimate rape."

Akin made no public appearances but went on former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s national radio show to apologize. He vowed to continue his bid for higher office.

Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin created a stir among Republicans and Democrats when he made comments suggesting that the bodies of women raped by force will generally reject a pregnancy.
 
"The good people of Missouri nominated me, and I'm not a quitter," Akin said. "To quote my old friend John Paul Jones, I have not yet begun to fight."

But Akin seemed to be losing political support by the hour as fellow Republicans urged him to abandon a race the party had long considered essential in their bid to regain control of the Senate. Incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill is seen as vulnerable in public opinion polls and because she has been a close ally of President Barack Obama.

An official with the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee said the group’s head, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, called Akin on Monday to tell him that the committee had withdrawn $5,000,000 in advertising planned for the Missouri race. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the conversation was private.

Publicly, Cornyn called Akin’s comments "indefensible" and suggested he take 24 hours to consider "what is best for him, his family, the Republican Party and the values that he cares about and has fought for."

Two other Republican senators -- Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin -- urged Akin to step aside from the Senate race.

Brown, who is locked in a tight race with Democrat Elizabeth Warren, said Akin’s comments were "outrageous, inappropriate and wrong."

Johnson called Akin’s statements "reprehensible and inexcusable," and urged Akin to withdraw "so Missouri Republicans can put forth a candidate that can win in November."

Akin also got a swift rebuke from the campaign of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Romney and Ryan "disagree with Mr. Akin’s statement, and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape," Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said.

“Like millions of other Americans, we found them to be offensive,” Romney said in an interview with National Review Online.

The furor began Sunday in an interview on KTVI-TV in St. Louis. Asked if he would support abortions for women who have been raped, Akin said: "It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Later Sunday, Akin released a statement saying that he "misspoke." But the fallout was swift and severe.

During the somber interview on Huckabee’s program, Akin apologized repeatedly, saying he made "serious mistakes" in his comments on KTVI.
 
"Rape is never legitimate. It's an evil act. It's committed by violent predators," Akin said. "I used the wrong words the wrong way." He later made a similar apology in an appearance on Sean Hannity’s radio show.

President Barack Obama said Akin’s comments underscore why politicians — most of whom are men — should not make health decisions on behalf of women.
 
"Rape is rape," Obama said. And the idea of distinguishing among types of rape "doesn’t make sense to the American people and certainly doesn’t make sense to me."

Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin created a stir among Republicans and Democrats when he made comments suggesting that the bodies of women raped by force will generally reject a pregnancy.

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said a woman who is raped “has no control over ovulation, fertilization or implantation of a fertilized egg. ... To suggest otherwise contradicts basic biological truths.”

Between 10,000 and 15,000 abortions occur each year nationwide among women whose pregnancies resulted from rape or incest. An unknown number of babies are born to rape victims, the group said.

Research on the prevalence of rape-related pregnancies is spotty. One estimate published in 1996 said about 5 percent of rapes result in pregnancy, or about 32,000 pregnancies among adult women each year.

McCaskill was ready to move on, saying Akin should not be forced out of the race.

"What’s startling to me is that (Republican) party bigwigs are coming down on him and saying that he needs to kick sand in the face of all the primary voters," McCaskill said Monday at a campaign event in suburban St. Louis.

"I want Missourians to make a choice in this election based on policy, not backroom politics."

The McCaskill campaign seemed to favor a matchup against Akin. McCaskill ran statewide TV ads during the primaries painting Akin as too conservative even for Missouri. She also ran ads against his GOP rivals.

The Akin ads served two purposes for McCaskill: boosting Akin among the more conservative Republican primary voters to help get him nominated and raising questions about him among moderates and liberals.

Akin won the state’s Republican Senate primary just two weeks ago by a comfortable margin over millionaire businessman John Brunner and former state Treasurer Sarah Steelman. Many considered him a favorite to beat McCaskill in November.

Experts say the rape comments were a game-changer.
 
"He may in fact have mortally wounded himself," said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. "This is a statement that is so crude and so offensive to more than half the electorate that there’s a real danger here the he has dealt himself out of this race."

University of Missouri political scientist Peverill Squire said Akin’s comments could particularly hurt him among suburban voters, where Republicans have done well in recent elections and "where McCaskill really does need to pick up some votes to stay in office. This certainly gives her an opening."

Ushering Akin from the race is complicated by the fact that he has never been a candidate beholden to the party establishment. Since being elected to Congress in 2000, Akin has relied on a grassroots network of supporters. His Senate campaign is being run by his son.

Missouri election law allows candidates to withdraw 11 weeks before Election Day. That means the deadline for the November 6 election would be 5 p.m. Tuesday. Otherwise, a court order would be needed to remove a candidate’s name from the ballot.

If Akin were to leave, state law gives the Republican state committee two weeks to name a replacement. The candidate would be required to file within 28 days of Akin’s exit.

If Akin gets out, attention turns to Brunner and Steelman, but other possibilities include Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich, whom Republicans unsuccessfully tried to draft into the race earlier this year; former Sen. Jim Talent; and two members of Missouri’s House delegation, Blaine Luetkemeyer and Jo Ann Emerson.

Talent, who lost his seat to McCaskill in 2006, said he would not enter the race, The Washington Post reported.

Akin, a former state lawmaker who was first elected to the House in 2000, has a long-established base among evangelical Christians. He has been an outspoken abortion opponent, and his campaign website proudly points out that he is listed among Planned Parenthood’s “Toxic Ten” legislators.

Associated Press writers Henry Jackson in Washington; Jim Suhr in St. Louis; Chris Blank in Jefferson City, Mo.; and Lindsey Tanner in Chicago contributed to this report.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- 30 -

GOP Senate challenger's gynecology lesson about "legitimate rape"

Agence France-Presse (AFP)
(world's oldest news agency)
Sunday 19 August 2012

Furor over Republican
U.S. Senate candidate's
'legitimate rape' comment

WASHINGTON DC -- A Republican senatorial candidate triggered a firestorm of criticism, including a rebuff from Mitt Romney's campaign, after he suggested that "legitimate rape" rarely causes pregnancy.

Explaining his complete opposition to abortion, even in the instance of rape, Representative Todd Akin said pregnancy from rape was rare because of biological reactions to "legitimate rape."

"First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare," Akin told KTVI television in an interview widely distributed by Democrats. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Akin then said that if a woman got pregnant after being raped, there should be consequences for the rapist, but not the unborn fetus.

"Let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment. But the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child," he said.

Democrats pounced, with incumbent Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill tweeting that she was "stunned" by the remarks and her reelection campaign using Akin's interview to ask for donations.

Romney, the Republican White House hopeful, and his running mate Paul Ryan immediately sought to distance themselves from Akin's comments on one of the most polarizing issues in American politics.

"Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr Akin's statement, and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape," a campaign statement read.

In a statement later released by her office, McCaskill shunned the "offensive" position advanced by her rival.

"It is beyond comprehension that someone can be so ignorant about the emotional and physical trauma brought on by rape," she said.

And her campaign website urged supporters to make a contribution "so we can ensure that Missouri is represented by a Senator who will fight for women's rights -- not set them back 50 years."

Akin later said he "misspoke," but stood by his opposition to abortion.

"In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it's clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year," he said in a statement released by his campaign.

"I recognize that abortion, and particularly in the case of rape, is a very emotionally charged issue. But I believe deeply in the protection of all life and I do not believe that harming another innocent victim is the right course of action."

Republicans have long called for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion.

Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved
- 30 -
 

Vleeptron wishes all Eid Mubarak (with this pretty filched image)

Click on image to enlarge.

It's Eid al-Fitr  ‎عيد الفطر  marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Eid Mubarak -- a Blessed Eid to all.

RATM guitarist Tom Morello shares his feeling about Paul Ryan -- who said RATM is one of his fave bands

Click photo to enlarge

The Rolling Stone
(USA weekly magazine, 
rock music & national affairs)
Thursday 16 August 2012

Op-ed column

'Paul Ryan Is the 
Embodiment of the 
Machine Our Music 
Rages Against'

Rage Against the Machine's guitarist
blasts Romney's VP pick and unlikely Rage fan

Last week, Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan, the Republican architect of Congress's radical right-wing budget plan, as his running mate. Ryan has previously cited Rage Against the Machine as one of his favorite bands. Rage guitarist Tom Morello responds in this exclusive op-ed.
 
by Tom Morello

Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn't understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn't understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.

Ryan claims that he likes Rage's sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.

I wonder what Ryan's favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of "Fuck the Police"? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!

Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions.

You see, the super rich must rationalize having more than they could ever spend while millions of children in the U.S. go to bed hungry every night. So, when they look themselves in the mirror, they convince themselves that "Those people are undeserving. They're ... lesser." Some of these guys on the extreme right are more cynical than Paul Ryan, but he seems to really believe in this stuff. This unbridled rage against those who have the least is a cornerstone of the Romney-Ryan ticket.

But Rage's music affects people in different ways. Some tune out what the band stands for and concentrate on the moshing and throwing elbows in the pit. For others, Rage has changed their minds and their lives. Many activists around the world, including organizers of the global occupy movement, were radicalized by Rage Against the Machine and work tirelessly for a more humane and just planet. Perhaps Paul Ryan was moshing when he should have been listening.

My hope is that maybe Paul Ryan is a mole. Maybe Rage did plant some sensible ideas in this extreme fringe right wing nut job. Maybe if elected, he'll pardon Leonard Peltier.  Maybe he'll throw U.S. military support behind the Zapatistas. Maybe he'll fill Guantanamo Bay with the corporate criminals that are funding his campaign -- and then torture them with Rage music 24/7. That's one possibility. But I'm not betting on it.
- 30 -

Cahiers du Vleeptron is whipped up in a froth to see Cronenberg's latest strange thing, "Cosmopolis" / where is the harm? huh? / Ben & Jerry's, antidote for heartache / she said she was sorry

Cliquez le fiche pour le plus grande.

When Robert Pattinson -- famed from his "Twilight" saga teenage vampire movies -- made his first television appearance earlier this week, on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart and Pattinson devoured quarts of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Pattinson is just getting over the Worst Breakup & gf Betrayal Ever.

(She said she was sorry she banged the movie director.)

Cahiers du Vleeptron is a total sucker for any Cronenberg flick.

Our all-time favorite is Cronenberg's "Crash."

What are the 2 Great Themes of all Hollywood movies?

1. Sex

2. High-Speed car wrecks

So where is the harm, where is the harm, when Cronenberg mates Sex with High-Speed Car Wrecks? 

Huh? 

Where is the harm in getting stiff nipples and huge erections by smashing hot car metal and windshield glass on urban highways at 90 miles per hour?

Huh? Where is the harm?

No. We lied. Cronenberg's greatest, weirdest, screwiest, whackiest film is "Videodrome" with James Woods and Debbie Harry (of Blondie).

What TV channel has the filthiest most hard-core porn ever?

Civic TV -- with its hypnotic new enhanced encoded signal!

Okay, we're still lying. "Videodrome" isn't about weird ultra-kinky TV porn.

It's about Marshall McLuhan (1911 – 1980). He's the real star of "Videodrome."

"North America's getting soft, Patron."
=======================
Wikipedia:
=======================
Cosmopolis (film)
Directed by     David Cronenberg
Produced by     Paulo Branco
Renee Tab
David Cronenberg
Martin Katz
Screenplay by     David Cronenberg
Based on     Cosmopolis by
Don DeLillo
Starring     Robert Pattinson
Paul Giamatti
Samantha Morton
Sarah Gadon
Mathieu Amalric
Juliette Binoche
Music by     Howard Shore
Metric[1][2]
Studio     Alfama Films
Kinology
Prospero Pictures
Toronto Antenna
Distributed by     Entertainment One
Release date(s)    

    May 25, 2012 (Cannes)
    June 8, 2012 (Canada)
    August 17, 2012 (US)

Running time     109 minutes[3]
Country     France
Canada
Portugal
Italy
Language     English
Box office     $2,837,056[4]

Cosmopolis is a 2012 drama film starring Robert Pattinson, directed by David Cronenberg. It is based on the novel of the same name by Don DeLillo. On May 25, 2012, the film premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival,[5] drawing mixed early critical reactions.[6] The film was released in Canada on June 8, 2012,[7] and is scheduled to have a limited release in the United States on August 17, 2012.[8]

Plot

Billionaire Eric Packer (Pattinson) rides slowly across Manhattan in his limousine that he uses as his office while on his way to his preferred barber, even though there are traffic jams. The traffic jams are caused by a visit of the president of the United States and by the funeral of Eric's favourite musician, whose music he plays in one of his two private elevators. He has recently married. In the car and elsewhere, he has meetings with his wife, who does not want sex with him, to save energy that she needs for her work. Instead, he has sex with other women. In his car, while having a meeting, he has his doctor carry out his daily medical checkup; Eric worries about the doctor's finding that he has an asymmetrical prostate. After devastating currency speculation, he kills his bodyguard and follows a path of further self-destruction, including visiting his potential murderer and deliberately shooting himself in the hand.

Cast

    Robert Pattinson as Eric Packer
    Jay Baruchel as Shiner
    Paul Giamatti as Benno Levin
    Kevin Durand as Torval
    Juliette Binoche as Didi Fancher, Eric's art consultant, with whom Eric has an affair
    Samantha Morton as Vija Kinsky, Eric’s chief advisor
    Sarah Gadon as Elise Shifrin
    Mathieu Amalric as André Petrescu aka The Pastry Assassin
    K'naan as Brutha Fez, a rap artist
    Emily Hampshire as Jane Melman, Eric's chief of finance
    Patricia McKenzie as Kendra Hays, Eric's bodyguard, with whom Eric has an affair

Production

News about a film adaptation of Cosmopolis first emerged on 10 February 2009 when Geoffrey Macnab, writing for Screendaily.com, reported that "In his most ambitious project to date, international producer Paulo Branco is plotting a $10m-12m film based on the novel Cosmopolis by legendary US writer Don DeLillo. Branco's Alfama Films is producing the film about a day in the life of a young billionaire financier who, over the course of a traumatic day, loses all his wealth. A director will be named shortly and DeLillo is on board to collaborate."[9]

On July 26, 2009, it was announced that Canadian director David Cronenberg had become involved in the project and would now bring the novel to the screen. The film was scheduled to begin filming in 2010, with Paulo Branco's Paris-based production house Alfama Films co-producing with Cronenberg's Toronto Antenna Ltd.[10]

On September 3, 2009, Paulo Branco officially confirmed to Screendaily.com that "Cronenberg has now finished his screenplay and is now looking to cast the film."[11]

On January 13, 2010, it was reported that Cronenberg was still committed to the film, although a cast and a starting date for production were yet to be announced. Cronenberg said that everyone was "happy with the script" and he was "very fond" of the project.[12]

The filming took place in Toronto and was completed in July 2011.

Colin Farrell was initially cast in the main role but left due to scheduling difficulties with Total Recall.[13] He was later replaced by Pattinson. Marion Cotillard was involved in the project but also left because of scheduling conflicts.[14]

Reception

Cosmopolis premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 25, 2012.

Cosmopolis received mixed to positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an aggregate score of 66% positive reviews from 46 reviews counted, with an average score of 5.8 out of 10.[15] Justin Chang of Variety wrote: "An eerily precise match of filmmaker and material, Cosmopolis probes the soullessness of the 1% with the cinematic equivalent of latex gloves. ... Pattinson's excellent performance reps an indispensable asset."[16] Robbie Collin of The Telegraph gave the film four stars out of five, stating, "It's a smart inversion of Cronenberg’s 1999 film eXistenZ: rather than being umbilically connected to a virtual world, Packer is hermetically sealed off from the real one. At its heart is a sensational central performance from Robert Pattinson – yes, that Robert Pattinson – as Packer. Pattinson plays him like a human caldera; stony on the surface, with volcanic chambers of nervous energy and self-loathing churning deep below."[17] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly stated, "Cosmopolis includes its own version of the Occupy hordes: scruffy, vengeful protesters who run around the streets, and into restaurants, brandishing the bodies of dead rats. ... Pattinson, pale and predatory even without his pasty-white vampire makeup, delivers his frigid pensées with rhythmic confidence."[18]

However, Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter criticized the film writing, "Lifeless, stagey and lacking a palpable subversive pulse despite the ready opportunities offered by the material, this stillborn adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel initially will attract some Robert Pattinson fans but will be widely met with audience indifference."[19]

Films directed by David Cronenberg

Stereo (1969)
Crimes of the Future (1970)
Shivers (1975)
Rabid (1977)
Fast Company (1979)
The Brood (1979)
Scanners (1981)
Videodrome (1983)
The Dead Zone (1983)
The Fly (1986)
Dead Ringers (1988)
Naked Lunch (1991)
M. Butterfly (1993)
Crash (1996)
eXistenZ (1999)
Spider (2002)
A History of Violence (2005)
Eastern Promises (2007)
A Dangerous Method (2011)
Cosmopolis (2012)

=======================

The New York Times
Thursday 16 August 2012

Master of a Shrinking Universe
 
‘Cosmopolis,’ Directed by David Cronenberg

by Manohla Dargis

The first image in David Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis,” a cold, funny number about the erotics of money and the seduction of death, is that of a chrome grille on a white stretch limousine. The shot is a close-up that’s so tightly framed that the grille, with its U shape and vertical bars, looks as if it were smiling. It also looks like a shark, a perfect starting point for a story about a master of the universe who, over one long day and night, lives, eats, evacuates and fornicates in the limo. A master who, like some kind of millennial Jonah, has taken up residence in the belly of a new beast.

The limo belongs to Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson), a young money man whose mysterious ways with capital have made him so unfathomably rich that he seems to have transcended everyday flop-sweat wheeling and dealing and reached a permanent state of Zen. You first see him next to a building, as unmoving and marble white as a Greek statue (or maybe a stiff). He’s impeccably dressed in a black suit and white shirt, with a meticulously knotted tie, a luxuriant slick swirl of hair and fathomless blue eyes initially obscured by dark glasses. The world is his succulent oyster. But all that Eric wants — all that this contemporary god who lives in a tower and plays with money needs — is a haircut.

“Cosmopolis” is an extraordinarily faithful adaptation of the not especially well-regarded 2003 novel by Don DeLillo, so it’s no surprise that the movie didn’t find much love when it played at the Cannes Film Festival in May. The story is as sleek as its limo is symbolically lugubrious. While being driven around New York, a zomboid billionaire loses a great deal and, by doing so, becomes human. It’s the end of the world, or at least one world, in a movie that’s opaque and transparent, as well as discomfortingly real, suggestively allegorical and perversely comic, never more so than during a prostate exam that — with a snap of latex and the crown of sweat that beads across Eric’s perfect alabaster head — becomes a sexualized display.

The prostate exam, like so much else in the movie, takes place in the limo. But before Eric gets in to begin his strange journey, he diffidently informs his head of security, Shiner (Jay Baruchel), that “we need a haircut.” In this context the royal we is of course, preposterous, both too big for such a small desire and terribly puny for the centuries of royal prerogative that Eric evokes when he uses it. The first person plural also suggests that there’s an identity crisis lurking behind those dark glasses, and that the man who will soon settle into the limo isn’t a unified “I” in the familiar, comfortingly coherent Cartesian sense of “I think, therefore I am.”

Eric, you see, is a contingent creation, an accretion of habits and conventions, a postmodern construction. At first he seems like a manifestation of the artist Barbara Kruger’s brilliant 1987 commentary on consumer culture: “I Shop Therefore I Am.” Eric buys and sells money, but because money has changed, the self who buys and sells it has transformed too.

“Money has taken a turn,” says Eric’s chief of theory, Vija Kinsky (Samantha Morton, a mesmerizing, droning delivery system), one of the handful of visitors who pop in and out of Eric’s limo, dispensing bad news and aperçus. The Greeks had a word for the art of moneymaking (“chrimatistikos”), but now, she continues, “all wealth has become wealth for its own sake,” and money, having lost its narrative quality, “is talking to itself.”

From the way that Eric’s business is quickly spiraling downward, money appears to have stopped talking to him. This may be why he wants a haircut, but only from his father’s old barber, a yearning that summons up family, tradition, simplicity and those old lost days when money bought something tangible, something you could touch as effortlessly as the bristles of newly shorn hair.

Eric may work with money, but only in the most abstract sense. He doesn’t move money, but rather gazes at numbers flowing on the glowing blue monitors in his limo. What’s missing is the thrill of the hunt, the buy and sell, the fear and desire. He sprawls on his thronelike perch in the limo, having satisfied every whim, and while he wants more, always more, there’s a sense that he’s bought himself into oblivion.

A series of events, some involving the mysteriously unpredictable yuan, forcibly and with escalating violence shake Eric out of his torpor. Nearly affectless at first, Mr. Pattinson makes a fine member of the Cronenbergian walking dead, with a glacial, blank beauty that brings to mind Deborah Kara Unger in the director’s version of J. G. Ballard’s “Crash.” Mr. Pattinson can be a surprisingly animated presence (at least he was on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” where he recently put in a game appearance), and he may be capable of greater nuance and depth than is usually asked of him. Certainly, with his transfixing mask and dead stare, he looks the part he plays here and delivers a physical performance that holds up to a battery of abuses, including that prostate exam and some anticlimactic tears.

Mr. Cronenberg’s direction throughout “Cosmopolis” is impeccable, both inside the limo and out. The difficulties of shooting in such a tight space, which seems to expand and contract depending on the scene (as if the car were breathing), are conspicuous but rendered invisible by his masterly filmmaking. Mr. Cronenberg keeps you rapt, even when the story and actors don’t. Some of this disengagement is certainly intentional. Taken as a commentary on the state of the world in the era of late capitalism (for starters), “Cosmopolis” can seem obvious and almost banal. But these banalities, which here are accompanied by glazed eyes, are also to the point: the world is burning, and all that some of us do is look at the flames with exhausted familiarity.

Eric conducts a great deal of business inside his limo, a dark, gleaming space in which different monitors are roused to virtual life like luminous underwater creatures. The limo is an extension of Eric: it’s car and carapace both, but it also provides him with literal windows onto a world that, as the day unfolds, comes ferociously, threateningly alive with anarchist protests, a vision of self-annihilation and stirrings of revolution. From inside the limo, these images surround Eric like a wraparound movie screen and can look as ersatz as the rear-projection in an old Hollywood film. Each time Eric steps outside, though, these screens fall away, and he’s left in a mounting frenzy of life and death, one that affirms its reality with brutal finality.

“Cosmopolis” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Adult sex and violence.

Cosmopolis

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by David Cronenberg, based on the novel by Don DeLillo; director of photography, Peter Suschitzky; edited by Ronald Sanders; music by Howard Shore; production design by Arv Grewal; costumes by Denise Cronenberg; produced by Paulo Branco and Martin Katz; released by Entertainment One. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes.

WITH: Robert Pattinson (Eric Packer), Juliette Binoche (Didi Fancher), Sarah Gadon (Elise Schifrin), Mathieu Amalric (Andre Petrescu), Jay Baruchel (Shiner), Kevin Durand (Torval), K’Naan (Brutha Fez), Emily Hampshire (Jane Melman), Samantha Morton (Vija Kinsky) and Paul Giamatti (Richard Sheets/Benno Levin).
- 30 -