Last week it was Barbara Eden. This week it's Woody Allen.
MAHER: You say... in your unconvincing defense of how you're not an intellectual... that you never read "Great Expectations," you never read "Ulysses," you never read "1984," "Catch 22, "Don Quixote"....
WOODY: That's right. I've never read any of the ones you've just mentioned.
MAHER: I've read 'em all. You want to get the skinny on them. You want to, you want to get...
WOODY: Yeah, you could condense 'em?
MAHER: Yeah, well...
WOODY: I hadn't the patience to read any of them. I was never a reader. I never enjoyed reading as a kid.
"... on April 25.
Eric Zhu, the company’s 17-year-old co-founder, said the inaugural event would pit samples taken from two healthy young university students against each other on a racetrack 20cm (8in) long and modelled on the female reproductive system.... 'We want to turn health into competition,' Zhu said. 'Sperm is surprising as a biomarker. The healthier you are, the faster sperm moves.'... A live video feed, magnified 40 times to display the 0.05mm spermatozoa, will track the samples’ progress....The event will be run over three races in front of a crowd of 4,000 spectators, and feature play-by-play commentary, instant replays and leaderboards, according to Zhu.
With the sperm expected to swim at a speed of 5mm per minute, each race will take something like 40 minutes. There are 3 races... and room for 4,000 spectators. Interesting concept, and congratulations to the teenagers for getting $1.5 million and an article in the London Times, but I think success here depends on the quality of the play-by-play commentators.
For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: "What is the key to doing good play-by-play commentary for a long race, say 40 minutes?"
"I first visited 1X’s offices in Silicon Valley nearly a year ago. When a robot named Eve entered the room, opening and closing the door, I could not shake the feeling that this wide-eyed robot was really a person in costume. Eve... felt human. I thought of 'Sleeper,' the 1973 Woody Allen sci-fi comedy filled with robotic butlers.... Mr. Jang was entranced by the way that Eve moved.... 'I saw a level of hardware that I did not think was possible,' Mr. Jang said.... And because of growing shortage of workers who handle both house cleaning and care of elders and children, organizations that represent these workers welcome the rise of new technologies that do work in the home — provided that companies like 1X build robots that work well alongside human workers."
That's Argentina's President Javier Milei, handing Musk the chainsaw, so I went to Milei's feed to try to get the video to embed from Milei's feed, where I got a bit distracted. For example, he reposted this:
On this day, February 21 1964, the Rolling Stones released the single Not Fade Away in the UK. Originally a Buddy Holly track, the Stones recorded their version at London’s Olympic Studios and it became the band’s first Top 10 hit in the United Kingdom! 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/kkM69cBxUz
Also, he was a UW alum: "Marshall... attended the University of Wisconsin, a school he chose casually because a friend was going there and seemed to like it."
And: "In 1964, Mr. Brickman played banjo as a member of the New Journeymen, a trio with John Phillips and Michelle Phillips. When Mr. Brickman left the group, the couple took on two new partners and created the Mamas & the Papas. That may have seemed like bad timing, but a few years later he and a friend were invited to Sharon Tate’s house in Beverly Hills and decided at the last minute to go to Malibu instead. It was the night of the Manson family murders."
In the late 1960s, Brickman was a writer on "The Tonight Show," and he created Carnac the Magnificent!
"I don’t regret working with him. He gave me a great job opportunity and he was kind to me.” Hall added that she did not talk to Allen any more, “but I don’t think that we should be the ones who are doing judge and jury on this.” Her policy now, she said, “is to be an artist. I don’t think that makes me apathetic or not engaged. I just think it’s my job.”
"The illusion of complete autonomy helped to draw attention to their technology and encourage venture capitalists to invest the billions of dollars needed to build increasingly effective autonomous vehicles...."
If a Zoox robot taxi encounters a construction zone it has not seen before, for instance, a technician in the command center will receive an alert — a short message in a small, colored window on the side of the technician’s computer screen. Then, using the computer mouse to draw a line across the screen, the technician can send the car a new route to follow around the construction zone.... While Zoox and other companies have started to reveal how humans intervene to help driverless cars, none of the companies have disclosed how many remote-assistance technicians they employ or how much it all costs....
That's always how it's been with robots. We suspect there's really a little guy in there....
And this is an interesting quote from Allen’s sister (and producer) Letty Aronson: "I’m happy that [the new movie is] opening. Woody is only interested in the creative part — once that’s done and he makes the film, he never sees it again. If you told him it wasn’t opening in the United States, it wouldn’t matter to him."
"... had the filmmaker not started to exit. After two minutes and 30 seconds of sustained applause once the film finished, Allen began to make his way toward the door, cutting the standing ovation short. The filmmaker looked visibly moved during the reaction and at one point took out a tissue.
Allen was greeted in the theater by a standing ovation before the movie even screened as fans tried to catch video of him. The reception was the same on the red carpet, with fans cheering him on enthusiastically — however, just outside the carpet a group of protesters walked by...."
Mx. Anantharaman sees the art form as a way to help people connect with nature, to experience “that moment of stillness, of vulnerability and enchantment” — even in an urban environment.
Taxidermy “shows you that bodies are not fixed and finite — they’re very liminal,” they said. “Bodies can really be whatever you want them to be.” Mx. Anantharaman, 40, lives in Flatbush, Brooklyn, with their partner and four cats: Fugazi, Garfield, Mani and Junior.
"... in Instagram parodies filmed by her husband. She has appeared in videos as a clueless self-care influencer, sometimes wrapped in a shearling rug, hawking tinctures with names like One Per Scent and Abundance, thanking Mercedes-Benz for ferrying her to ayahuasca ceremonies, and browbeating a pair of 'students' played by naked American Girl dolls marked up with Sharpies."
Predicted outrage, the stupidest form of outrage. I suspect most Christians know not to get triggered by every celebrity jackass who announces they're going to yank your chain tonight.
Sam Smith will be dressed up as Satan. Why, that's as outrageous as a 5-year-old on Halloween!
ADDED: I listened to the song on Spotify and read the lyrics at Genius. It's about a man having sex with a prostitute, and we're told that this sex is "unholy" and that the man is a "dirty, dirty boy."
AND: It seems as though Sam Smith has embraced the old Woody Allen answer to the question "Is sex dirty?"
"I would quote a passage from Salinger’s 'Franny and Zooey' comparing a performer’s audience to 'Christ Himself,' a righteous entity worthy of serving. I found similar comfort in a scene from 'Manhattan' in which Woody Allen’s character asks what makes life worth living, then rattles off a mix of cultural touchstones (before landing, of course, on 'Tracy’s face'). At nineteen, I wrote in a private journal that 'the knowledge that anything I feel has already been expressed in a work of art' was my version of feeling watched over by a higher power.
I still value the sanctity of the artist-audience exchange, but it worries me when conversations about artists’ misdeeds end up centering on it. When an artist is revealed to have abused someone, we ask, 'Can we still like their art? Is it still O.K. to?' These questions treat every individual’s response to art as a morality test. They confuse optics with ethics, muddying a useful distinction between reacting to a work of art—an act that, after all, is something visceral and involuntary, like laughter—and materially supporting it.... "
"... and to dedicate more time to writing during his twilight years. What is now set to be his final film is set in Paris and will be shot entirely in French in a couple of weeks... Allen has been shooting more often in Europe as his support in the U.S. has plunged given the abuse accusations against him.... Amazon Studios shelved his previous film 'A Rainy Day in New York' after accusing Allen of 'sabotaging' the future of the film by his comments on the abuse accusations of his daughter Dylan Farrow. He sued them for $68 million alleging a breach of contract. The dispute was later settled out of court...."
"... which in turn acts as the emotional and intellectual response to our basic survival mechanism. [Ernest Becker, the author of this Pulitzer Prize-winning 1973 book] argues that a basic duality in human life exists between the physical world of objects and biology, and a symbolic world of human meaning. Thus, since humanity has a dualistic nature consisting of a physical self and a symbolic self, we are able to transcend the dilemma of mortality by focusing our attention mainly on our symbolic selves, i.e. our culturally-based self esteem, which Becker calls 'heroism': a 'defiant creation of meaning' expressing 'the myth of the significance of human life' as compared to other animals.... Humanity's traditional 'hero-systems,' such as religion, are no longer convincing in the age of reason. Becker argues that the loss of religion leaves humanity with impoverished resources for necessary illusions. Science attempts to serve as an immortality project, something that Becker believes it can never do because it is unable to provide agreeable, absolute meanings to human life. The book states that we need new convincing 'illusions' that enable us to feel heroic in ways that are agreeable...."
From the Wikipedia article, "The Denial of Death," a book title that sprang to mind when I saw the news that the U.S. government is going to stop requiring daily reports of the number of Covid deaths.
This is the book Alvy Singer wanted Annie Hall to read:
"Randolph D. Pope of Dartmouth College, no stranger to sarcasm, congratulated Didion on providing 'a perfect example of how a mind too full with culture is unable to understand humor.' Roger Hurwitz (MIT) advised that she would 'do better to be alarmed by than morally superior to the attitudes, concerns and mores Mr. Allen’s characters reflect.' John Romano (Columbia) spent 647 words chastising her for — among other offenses — treating Allen’s characters’ brand of self-absorption as tiresome and distinctly contemporary, rather than placing them in an intellectual lineage that stretched back centuries. The NYRB also published Didion’s response to these letters. It reads, in its entirety, 'Oh, wow.'"
".... who refuse to capitulate to Donald Trump. Unfortunately, Fox viewers
rarely get to hear from them. They are booked by the network's producers
so rarely that their contracts could be likened to golden handcuffs.
Now they are ditching the cuffs."
If you're not on any shows, you can make a show out of the spectacle of leaving. And Brian Stelter tries to boost the visibility of this Jonah-and-Stephen-never-capitulate show.
As for "reality-based" — it made me think of Alvy Singer reacting to Duane Hall:
"Well, I have to go now... because I'm due
back on the Planet Earth."
As for "golden handcuffs" — this expression implies that they were paid a lot of money to go on Fox News exclusively, essentially paid to remain silent. But was that the deal? And how much money were they paid? Stelter doesn't say.
It's noble, I suppose, to walk away from money — depending on how much money it was and how ignoble it was to take it in the first place. But we're not told!
Here's the Goldberg + Hayes statement. It doesn't say how much money they got from Fox. Maybe they only walked away from the erstwhile honor of being affiliated with Fox. Now, they judge that association to be detrimental to their stature, and they break it off. If that's the case, there never were any "golden handcuffs," and there's nothing grand about the gesture of walking away.
As I mentioned yesterday, I rewatched this movie, which I'd absolutely loved when it came out. The script is by Woody Allen, who plays an extremely nervous and clumsy man whose wife has left him, and he's desperately looking for love with the help of his married friend, played by Diane Keaton. As the title suggests, there are references to the love triangle in "Casablanca."
Much of this movie worked quite well for me today. I even got waves of full-body chills at one point — to my surprise. I thought, what the hell? How did they make that happen? Movie magic! But not long before that climactic moment, there was an awkward love scene that included some dialogue that I can't remember accepting at the time but must have been considered hilarious and that is totally beyond the pale today:
KEATON: Did you read that another
Oakland woman was raped?
ALLEN: I was nowhere near Oakland! Do they know who did it?
KEATON: No, they haven't a clue. He must be very clever.
ALLEN: Yeah, you gotta have something on the ball to rape
so many women and get away with it.
He's smiling mischievously at that point.
KEATON: You know, I think if anybody ever tried to rape me, I'd just pretend to go along with it
until the middle and then just grab a heavy object
and let him have it... that is, unless, of course, I was enjoying it.
ALLEN: They say it's the
secret desire of every woman.
KEATON: I guess it depends on
who's doing the raping.
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