"Some people seem so obsessed with the morning/Get up early just to watch the sun rise...."

So begins the song Spotify chooses for me after it comes to the end of the album I'd chosen and as I am emerging from the overgrown forest path and looking back to see the sun has finally emerged above the smoke on the lake. 

That's a little too on the nose, Spotify. If you're really following me that doggedly you ought to act more nonchalant.

The album that was my choice — the soundtrack for my sunrise walk/run — was "New Morning." I'd picked it because as I drove up there was a "rabbit runnin’ down across the road" — as Bob sings in the title song. Yes, Bob, like Chuck Schumer, drops his G's.

I got back home and assembled my coffee-and-peanut-butter breakfast and then got a late start blogging because I became quite involved testing whether Grok would replicate my hypothesis about the progression of songs on the "New Morning" album. Seriously, I'm not going to bother you, the blog reader, with the details of my hypothesis about the alternating 5 themes. I'll just say I was surprised that Grok found "One More Weekend" to be "possibly... sinister." Oh, really?! We — Grok and I — got fixated on the first line "Slippin' and slidin' like a weasel on the run." Grok:

Higher thoughts.

I'm reading "White Dudes for Harris Was a ‘Rainbow of Beige’ That Raised $4 Million" (New York Magazine):

“I gotta laugh because I accepted the invitation not for being white, but because I’m a dude you know?” said actor Jeff Bridges, who pushed back on a philosophical point on the messaging from the campaign that Democrats must “fight” for democracy. “It’s not so much a fight, but a surrender to higher thoughts of how we want the future to turn out,” Bridges said. “That’s just my opinion, man.”

"That’s just my opinion, man" suggests he's joking. I get the reference.....

... but which way is he joking? Is it that the movie character of "The Dude" is averse to fighting and takes a slacker route to the same destination? You don't have to fight. Only surrender. That seems like a satire of the Democrats' message. Is he toying with them? Just fooling around? Or is he saying that white men really ought to surrender. Stand down and think of "higher thoughts." The future belongs to... somebody else. 

Movies that you have to watch twice to understand.

That's a title for a list I wanted and, googling, I found 5 things. Let's see if any fit my needs. I have come to believe that the best movie-watching experience is the second (or subsequent) watch, so that first watches feel like a test to see whether this is a movie worth watching at all. These days, if I watch a movie once and think it's good, I watch it again, within a day or two. That way, I have the greatest opportunity to see the most in this thing I've discovered is worth watching. Sometimes on second watch, I feel humbled by how much I missed the first time around. I'm practically laughing at myself for thinking I had seen the movie.

So let's look at what my search turned up.

"The painted zebra rug needs to stay - It really ties the room together."

Says a commenter — referencing "The Big Lebowski" — at "What a Spectacularly Decrepit Greenwich Village Apartment" — a New York Magazine piece about "a totally decrepit one-bedroom, for an asking price of $685,000, on West 11th Street... a gut-reno kind of place."

I say buy it and live in it just how it is. Cherish it.

"When President Biden, standing at NATO headquarters on Monday, referred to President Vladimir V. Putin as 'a worthy adversary,' ears perked up in Moscow...."

"'Putin’s goal is to transition to a respectful adversarial relationship from the disrespectful one we have today,' said Vladimir Frolov, a Russian foreign affairs columnist. 'That seems to be in line with Biden’s objectives for a "predictable and stable relationship."'...  In his interview with NBC taped last week, Mr. Putin praised Mr. Biden as a 'professional' who had spent 'just about all his conscious life in politics.'"

From "In Geneva, Putin Wants Respect. Biden Might Just Give Him Some/By calling the Russian leader 'a worthy adversary,' the president raised expectations in Moscow, but he will expect the favor to be returned" (NYT).

Praised? I don't think that was praise!  

One day Biden called Putin a "killer," and later Biden was calling him "a worthy adversary." Can you be both, did Putin change, or was Biden bullshitting both times or only once? In any case, how can it be that Putin thinks of Biden as anything but weak? 

Putin sloughed off the "killer" accusation as macho Hollywood talk of the sort people in America go in for. I'm sure he no more susceptible to compliments like "worthy adversary."

ADDED: From "No sign of thaw between Russia and US ahead of Geneva summit" in The Guardian:

Analysts suggested that the upcoming summit would be “boring” and a carefully-controlled “snoozefest” as both sides attempted something of a reboot following a catastrophic meeting between Putin and Donald Trump in Helsinki in 2018, which Trump insisted on holding without any aides. Top US aides were apoplectic as Trump emerged from one-on-one talks with Putin and rejected his own FBI’s assessment that Russia had interfered in the 2016 elections. “President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be,” he told reporters. One advisor later said she considered faking a medical emergency to end the press conference....

The White House does not want a joint press conference this time. Biden told reporters: “This is not a contest about who can do better in front of a press conference to try to embarrass each other.”

Don't compete in events you can't win. Know your limitations. But does Biden know all his limitations and have the wisdom to decline to participate in all the activities he can't handle?  

 

ADDED: Tom emails "For some reason I thought of that scene in The Big Lebowski, where Walter is musing about Vietnam":

The gooiest ad I've ever seen — with a tinkling piano playing the National Anthem and the hilariously sentimental voice of Sam Elliott.

 

That ad played during the World Series. I'm not watching the World Series. I read about the ad in that WaPo article I linked to in the previous post. According to WaPo: "While Trump on Tuesday appealed in person to his most ardent fans with divisive themes, Joe Biden’s campaign beamed in to the nation’s living rooms during the World Series with a much broader audience in mind." 

Yes, whoever made that ad, sure had the "broader audience in mind." I can picture clever fellows laughing at their own work, comparing it to a "South Park" parody, and joking about how dumb Americans are. 

Watching that ad, a few seconds in, Meade said "Tegridy Farms," and toward the end, I said, "This is for the dumb people" and "Actually, this is very effective." I could feel the emotion they were trying to put over. Joe will bring us together — no reason why and don't you worry your head about what he'll actually do while you're in a hypnotic fog of phony-baloney togetherness.

I'm looking for the right "Tegridy Farms" ad to convey Meade's point. There's this, but as Meade said, "It doesn't have enough of that voice — you know, like that guy... that guy in 'The Big Lebowski.'" I say: "Sam Elliott! You do realize the voice in the Biden ad is Sam Elliott." Meade thought it was just some guy doing his damnedest to sound like Sam Elliott. No, that's actually Sam Elliott. You might think Sam Elliott is such an extreme that he'd be reserved for the comic exaggeration of the voice of a narrator...

  

... but the Biden campaign is using him utterly seriously, to stir our soulfully deep desire for America.

 

Why don't they just give us the marijuana already? Then we could sit back and laugh at all this absurdity. Ah, but then you'd be like me, abstaining.* They need you to vote. You've got to melt into a pool of goo and yet maintain sufficient semblance to a human creature to check a box on a mail-in ballot.

_________________________

* No, I'm not on marijuana. It doesn't even work on me. I'm naturally this way.

"This is what happens..."

This is what happens to someone who loyally gets appointed Attorney General of the United States & then doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt. Recuses himself on FIRST DAY in office, and the Mueller Scam begins! https://t.co/2jGnRgOS6h

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2020

I guess I'll go ahead and make a Tommy Tuberville tag.

IN THE COMMENTS: TheThinMan identifies "This is what happens..." as a line from "The Big Lebowski" (which is NSFW and I'll leave it to you to decide how much it's something Trump means to say to Jeff Sessions):

Sharyl Attkisson picks a winning pro-Trump description of impeachment (and I guess there will be a winning anti-Trump description).

2-Winner: #1 Pro-Trump description of impeachment:
(Thanks for playing!) https://t.co/kyOo0RARQI pic.twitter.com/B3aZbEsyMo

— Sharyl Attkisson🕵️‍♂️ (@SharylAttkisson) January 19, 2020

Naming the apartment building...

I just happened to walk by there the other day.

I think this is a sign that everything's going to be all right.

The Guardian, on its front page, features an article titled "The 10 greatest cardigans." And "cardigans" isn't some special British word for something more important than a sweater that buttons down the front. This is actually an article identifying and ranking the great button-down sweaters in history. #7 is that thick, nubby thing Jeff Bridges wore in "The Big Lebowski." #4 is that even rattier thing Kurt Cobain wore in Nirvana's MTV "Unplugged" performance. #1 is the J. Crew "symbol of Michelle Obama’s mastery of soft-power semiotics" that FLOTUS wore on her first visit to London when she met the Prime Minister's wife. Michelle Obama also wore a cardigan to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen, but apparently the soft-power semiotics she deployed for the Prime Minister's wife had more greatness about it.

"Jesus was into the whole brevity thing, and the aloof rhetoric he used to deflate the invective and indignant finger-pointing of his enemies bears close resemblance..."

"... to the ways in which The Dude [in The Big Lebowski] shows his default distrust and dislike for authority. When Jesus faced the authorities of his time and place, whether they were religious rulers, political leaders, or civil officials, he refused, even when it cost him, to show deference. Earthly hierarchies held no value in the philosophical system or moral practice of Jesus. The Dude, at no point, humbles himself at the feet of millionaires, law enforcement, or known pornographers. One of the messages of the Gospel is that respect and reverence are qualities given to a person, regardless of that person’s level of income and social status, only after that person has proven herself worthy. Jesus told his followers that what a person puts inside of his mouth does not make him clean or unclean, but only the words that person allows to leave his mouth. He also cherished the gift of one bit from a severely impoverished woman more than a large donation from a boastful tycoon. Jesus asked those around him to look past status and peer into the soul. The Dude, sitting across the table from the Big Lebowski or the Sheriff of Malibu, knows that these men, despite their wealth or legal authority, are vast reservoirs of emptiness. Their treasure chests are hollow, and their shiny suits of gold exist only to conceal the hideous deformities of their character. The Big Lebowski, surrounded by the accoutrements of wealth and walls that adorn photographic tributes to his own vanity, lectures The Dude about his lifestyle, calls him a bum, and boasts about his achievements. The Dude puts on his sunglasses, and says 'fuck it' before walking away. Later in the movie, we find him in another office receiving another cumbersome reprimand. On the opposite side of the desk is the Sheriff of Malibu whose moral compass is so far off that he praises Jackie Treehorn – a known pornographer and extortionist – because 'he draws a lot of water in this town' and insults The Dude, because he 'doesn’t draw shit.' After unleashing his tirade, he asks The Dude if he understands that he is not to return to Malibu. The Dude looks him in the eye and says with deadpan delivery, 'I’m sorry I wasn’t listening.'"

From "Takin' It Easy for Us Sinners: The Dude and Jesus Christ" by David Masciotra.

Meade and I watched "The Big Lebowski" a few days ago, and the first thing Meade said this morning was "The Dude is Jesus."

What is that guy-reading-a-newspaper painting in that photo of Melania Trump and Brigitte Macron at the National Gallery of Art?

Thank you @NGADC for the beautiful tour among your many galleries. The paintings are a testament to the influence art has among all cultures. I was glad to be able to view the exquisite works with Mrs. Macron. pic.twitter.com/4bpw7BBhPL

— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) April 24, 2018

It's "The Artist's Father, Reading 'L'Événement'" (1866) by Paul Paul Cézanne:

In The Artist's Father Cézanne explored his emotionally charged relationship with his banker father. Tension is particularly evident in the energetic, expressive paint handling, an exaggeration of Courbet's palette knife technique. The unyielding figure of Louis-Auguste Cézanne, the newspaper he is reading, his chair, and the room are described with obtrusively thick slabs of pigment. The Artist's Father can be interpreted as an assertion of Cézanne's independence. 

Ah! Just like Melania asserting her independence from the unyielding figure of Donald J. Trump!



Looks a little like Trump, too, don't you think? Trump or Marlon Brando.

By the way, and a propos of the first post of the day, did you know that Marlon Brando was the Coen brothers' first choice to play the big Lebowski (that is, the rich old guy) in "The Big Lebowski"? (Others on their list: Robert Duvall, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Norman Mailer, George C. Scott, Jerry Falwell, Gore Vidal, Andy Griffith, William F. Buckley, and Ernest Borgnine. In the end, David Huddleston got the role.)

"I just always hope that God is a movie fan and also forgiving, because I’ve made some poor choices in my past. ‘Boogie Nights’ is up there at the top of the list."

Said Mark Wahlberg (last November).

I would have blogged that last November if I'd seen it at the time, but I didn't, so why (you may ask) am I seeing it this morning? I've been up since 4:30 a.m. and reading about the movie we happened to watch last night, which was something that had been sitting on the DVR since early March, "The Big Lebowski." Everyone was talking about "The Big Lebowski" back then because it was the 20th anniversary of the release of the film, which was a big flop in theaters (I saw it at the time) but became the very definition of a cult film over the years.  I found it on some cable channel, recorded it, then left it festering.

Weirdly, it made about exactly the same impression on me, watching it for the second time, that it made originally, which was something like this is awfully self-indulgent and I'm uncomfortable with the treatment of women. But I woke up this morning — song cue — thinking about the women of "The Big Lebowski" in a different way. The men in that movie are ruined and marginalized, and the women are doing the marginalizing (and rarely on screen because the cameras are trained on the dead ends of loserville).

So I was reading things like "Maude and The Dude: Feminism and Masculinity in The Big Lebowski" (Bitch Flicks) and thinking about Julianne Moore (Maude) led me to "Julianne Moore Reacts to Mark Wahlberg's Boogie Nights Diss: 'It Made His Career!'"



There's something so sad about that. Moore is laughing at him for feeling bad about something that gave him worldly success and showing no feeling whatsoever for Walhberg's religious orientation, which (I assume) would make him more penitent about the things he did that brought him worldly success. Bible verse that comes to mind:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

"If you need to watch a movie more than once to understand it, then you've lost me. That's the definition of a bad movie, in fact."

Writes MadisonMan in the comments to the post about the 20th anniversary of the movie "The Big Lebowski" and the critics who panned it. He agrees with the original reviews, but has only "watched it once, and I'm not rewatching. It's unwatchable to me...."

The subject of rewatching (and rereading) is a big one, I realized as I started to respond to MadisonMan in the thread. I got this far:

I always had to rewatch an episode of "The Sopranos" to understand it. There was too much going on to get it the first time and too much artful ellipsis.

But I'd also have to watch last night's episode of "Survivor" again to understand it, and I know that isn't worth doing.

And then I decided this needed to be on the front page. When do you say, I am not rewatching/rereading that — they had one chance to reach me and I'm not putting my time into unraveling what they failed to make clear? And when do you say, I'm going back in to open up the mysteries that passed me by the first time?

One reason I'm glad not to be a law professor anymore (and glad to be able to follow the precepts of a fine religion) is that I was forced and had to force others to read Supreme Court opinions, and we were required to understand them, and that meant a lot of rereading of aesthetically displeasing and intellectually unrewarding verbiage.

I was bound by the power of the Court to spend twice as much time (at least) trying to read something that they could have spent more time making readably clear. I suspected that the Court deliberately inflated its own power by imposing burdensome reading. Heh, that will keep them busy, and they'll never get to the point where they can criticize us in writing that anyone else will have the endurance to read to the point of understanding.

But I was the Court's taskmaster, insisting to students — over and over — that no matter how incomprehensible you think this is, you can understand if you reread. Read it a second time, and if you still don't understand, read it a third time and a fourth. Empower yourself by discovering the meaning that only rereading will reveal.

I don't do that anymore.

I want to read and watch things that are rereadable/rewatchable. I truly believe that the best movies and writing are better the second time (or third or fourth time). But you can't get to the second time without going through the first, and when do you say, after the first, there will be no second time? Maybe the secret is to walk out of movies and throw aside books when you realize you're just trying to get through this and would never want to see/read it again?

Maybe, with all your first times, if you're not thinking this is going to be better the second time around, you should bail out of the first time. Is this a one-night-stand? If yes, then don't "Cat Person" it, get out.

"Though the movie was not a huge box-office success, it has since spawned a pseudo-religion, Dudeism, with more than 450,000 'ordained priests'..."

"... annual festivals around the country where thousands of costume-clad fans gather to celebrate the film and all its obscure moments; books and academic treatments; White Russian competitions, and legions of fans so fervent that they inspired a film of their own, the documentary, 'The Achievers.'"

From "'The Big Lebowski' is 20. We reached out to the critics who panned it to see what they think now" (WaPo).

It's fun reading the old bad reviews — "In Lebowski, we lose track not only of plot devices but of whole characters, who come and go without finding a reason to be. (John) Turturro is wasted as a bowler named Jesus, a convicted pedophile in Spandex. He is an amazing creation, but he has no function"... "What’s the point of scoring off morons who think they are cool? Jeff Bridges has so much dedication as an actor that he sacrifices himself to the Coen brothers’ self-defeating conception"... "‘The Big Lebowski’ lacks what even the most unhinged comedies must have in order to work: the recognition that out there, beyond the pratfalls and the wisecracks, lurks the darkness. … The Coens can’t be bothered — or perhaps they don’t know how — to make a connection between what’s inside their smart-aleck heads and the plodding, sometimes painful world in which the rest of us live when we’re not at the movies"... "'The Big Lebowski’ is ultimately too clever for its own good...."

Weird Al-evator.

Yesterday, after reading the Washington Post article about Weird Al, I watched his video "Tacky," which — the article explains — was made in a single unedited shot that includes a ride down an elevator:



Here's the Pharrell Williams video it parodies, which is charmingly entertaining but not as inventive photographically. You can watch the 2 videos playing side by side here. There's also a video at the WaPo link with background on the making of "Tacky," where we learn that the room we see in that freeze frame is also in "The Big Lebowski."

Last night, I dreamed I needed to get around in a strange hotel with an unusual, confusing elevator. I said "The hotel had a weird elevator... a weird al-evator."

"There should be more reflection about the source of our sense of the 'ratedness' of a movie."

"'The Big Lebowski' was mentioned [as overrated] by someone who is probably thinking of the cult status it achieved long after it came out. It wasn't considered very good originally. I remember seeing it in the theater when it came out, in spite of the not-so-good reviews, and seeing good and bad in it. Later, people found the good in a movie that hadn't gotten enough credit when it first came out. It became a cult favorite. If you then come along after all that, you may think you're going to see something wonderful, and when you see the bad that led to the original mixed reviews, you'll say the film is 'overrated.' So: what is your reference point? Where did you come in on the time line?"

That's something I wrote at the end of a long conversation over at Facebook (started by my son John with the question "What do you think is the most overrated movie?").

AND: Here's the picnic scene from "It's a Gift":



"Ah! Crackers! Good old crackers!"

ALSO: A good Mother's Day quote: "Those were my mother's feathers!"/"Never knew your mother had feathers."

"Apropos of nothing, you have never seen a man in shorts until you have seen Bill Murray in 'The Lost City.'"

Writes Bob Boyd, in the only comment on yesterday's Amazon post. (Here's "Lost City" on Amazon, in case you've got a yen to see Bill Murray in shorts, perhaps wandering lost in some city or perhaps knowing exactly where he is in a city that somehow finds itself lost.)

This makes me realize that I need to make a list of men in shorts movies (and TV shows). I think of "The Big Lebowski," but what else? There's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," where Johnny Depp plays the role of Hunter S. Thompson. Help me out here. Don't cite examples of men in bathing suits. Despite the similarity of men's bathing suits to shorts, it's not what we're looking for here. And don't include movies where the men are wearing sports uniforms/gear, e.g., "Hoosiers" and "Breaking Away." It must be a major character who is opting to go about in shorts in a situation in which women like me would think: That man should put on a pair of pants because those shorts make him look like a large boy.

By the way, speaking of titles that begin with "Breaking," the TV series "Breaking Bad" begins with the image of an empty pair of pants flying through the air. We never see the main character, Walter White, wearing shorts. Even when we see him with his pants off, in his underpants, the underpants are not undershorts but tighty whities. When not naked or in his underpants, he's wearing long pants like the long pants seen in that opening empty-pants shot. I think the series is a man's search for his lost masculinity. The lost masculinity is symbolized by the flying empty pair of pants.

So let's also work on a list of men-in-pants movies (and TV). Simply wearing pants is not enough for a pants-wearing-man to make this list, nor is looking great in pants enough. There needs to be some Walter-White-level importance to the pants, the kind of meaning expressed in phrases like "wearing the pants in this family" or "put on your big-boy pants."

"I don’t care who you are; it’s not right to put a human person’s ashes in a Wal-Mart bag."

When you get cremated remains, they're in a plastic bag inside whatever outer container you ordered — perhaps the standard cardboard box, perhaps some urn that you imagined was what urns are supposed to look like. How you feel when you receive that package will depend on a lot of things, but seeing the plastic bag — especially if you chose the ancient-bronze-looking Vessel of Somber Respect — is probably going to hurt. So then what if you pull the bag out and see that it's the cut off bottom of a bag that you recognize as a Wal-Mart bag?

If you're this lady in Ohio, you call the local TV station and let them put you in front of a camera to enact your grief. And you name the funeral home on television and to the Kentucky attorney general’s office and the Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors. The woman's ex-husband, father of the 17-year-old boy who died of a heart condition, also appears on camera, just to say what the funeral home did was "not malicious."

What if your family member had died, and you discovered the ground-up bones they gave you — they aren't really "ashes" — are in a Wal-Mart bag? Fragile souls should close that container back up and forget about it. Cover memories of the bag with memories of the dead person. Look at your best photographs. Remember life.

For less fragile souls: Find the humor. A remark about the value of recycling or what the dead one thought of Wal-Mart — for example: "He was always trying to get me to shop at Wal-Mart and I said I wanted a more posh shopping experience, and now, I can hear him laughing at me for wanting a more posh urn experience. Laughing at me from the grave. I mean from the goddamned Wal-Mart bag. No, not damned. He's not damned. He's gone to the Big Box Store in the Sky."

ADDED: Inevitable movie reference:

"Loosely based on Taoism, Dudeism aims to produce self-reliance and improve self-regard..."

"... so the congregational aspect of it isn't strongly emphasized anyway."

"The looser we keep it, the more 'Dude' it seems to be," Benjamin wrote. That may all change, though, when the Dudeist Social Network, a social media platform that will be pretty much exactly what it sounds like, goes live. "It'll be easier to disorganize some events without working too hard," he joked.

Benjamin is Oliver Benjamin, founder of the Church of the Latter-Day Dude and co-author of "The Abide Guide: Living Like Lebowski."

If you had to invent a religion based on a movie, what movie would you choose?