"What if we got more ambitious with the messaging and went after gun ownership itself?... Before you shut this down as Tipper Gore territory or just say no to Nancy Reagan 2.0..."

"... consider the effect of other big public service campaigns, which are especially successful when it’s clear the message comes down to saving lives... the seatbelt campaign... the “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” campaign... [the campaign against] cigarette use.... While in the pocket of the tobacco industry, Hollywood played a key role in glamorizing smoking, but then later, after paid tobacco product placement was banned, clamped down on the appearance of smoking on film and TV....  Sometimes, of course, a cigarette, like a gun, is key to a movie’s story line or characters. But the use of firearms onscreen can certainly be more intentional. Reaching for the gun in the course of storytelling isn’t always necessary. The best cinematic fight scene by far this year involved a weaponized fanny pack...."

 From "What to Do About Americans Who Love Their Guns" by Pamela Paul (NYT). 

 

They're still glamorizing violence! I would hate to see filmmakers pour their imagination into weaponizing more of the many ordinary objects that surround us. 

I'll bet you can think of some deadly household items you've witnessed over the years. Help me make a list. I'll start with the Roald Dahl/Alfred Hitchcock frozen leg of lamb. And the phone is ringing for Grace Kelly:

It's hard not to see.

On the NYT front page right now:

Here's a Psychology Today article "We See What We Want to See." It gets our attention with Grace Kelly's breasts:

“At the rehearsal for the scene in Rear Window when I wore a sheer nightgown, Hitchcock called for [costume designer] Edith Head. He came over here and said, ‘Look, the bosom is not right, we’re going to have to put something in there.’ He was very sweet about it; he didn't want to upset me, so he spoke quietly to Edith. We went into my dressing room and Edith said, ‘Mr. Hitchcock is worried because there’s a false pleat here. He wants me to put in falsies.’

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘You can't put falsies in this, it’s going to show—and I'm not going to wear them.’ And she said, ‘What are we going to do?’ So we quickly took it up here, made some adjustments there, and I just did what I could and stood as straight as possible—without falsies. When I walked out onto the set Hitchcock looked at me and at Edith and said, ‘See what a difference they make?’”

And here's a Buzzfeed listicle, "22 People Who Found Jesus In Their Food." Here he is — #16 — in the Marmite:

Why does Grace Kelly's son, Prince Albert, look like that?

He's only 52. And look at that woman who is marrying him.

Well, I think we know the answer. It's obvious. Men only look as good as they need to.

"I’m thrilled that Grace Kelly is being talked about in fashion circles...."

"... absolutely without irony." (David Wolfe, fashion forecaster.)

So fashion is suddenly getting very conservative. What does it mean?

"There is an energy about being proper. It’s not about wholesomeness, it’s about respectability, about having manners again." (Thakoon Panichgul, designer.)

Things to write in an obituary for a prince:

"I have watched the sun rise over the beaches of five continents and I have looked into the eyes of the most beautiful women of the universe."

Between race cars, shark-fishing and dancing the twist with Grace Kelly, he somehow found time for considerable achievements...

[H]e married Princess Ira von Furstenberg, descendant of Charlemagne and heiress to the Fiat fortune, who was 15 and had received a special dispensation from Pope Pius XII because she was under the age of consent. … [T]he bride was 45 minutes late. "You're awfully late, dear," Prince Alfonso was heard to mutter in English.

He was once said to have "the mustachioed good looks of a South American taxi driver."