"The Third Man" is a 1949 thriller and the cinematography is some of the best Hollywood has ever produced.
Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
Worth watching
"The Third Man" is a 1949 thriller and the cinematography is some of the best Hollywood has ever produced.
In reflection
I was reflecting last night on people and places and, of course, I stopped to think about some of the miserable sons of bitches I’ve come across along my life’s journey. In every case, these people ended up in the trash pile of life, one way or the other. So it occurred to me, if someone treats you badly, recognize that there is something wrong with them, not you. Normal people do not go around trying to destroy other people.
One more thing
Your mind
has to be stronger than your emotions. Learn that and you have learned
an extremely important life lesson. In my life, every single stupid decision I
made was made on pure emotion, in turn, that led to a chain reaction of one bad
situation after another. Your mind has to be stronger than your emotions.
So today's my birthday and there's this.....
Christmas isn’t over just yet! January 6th is Women’s Little Christmas, or Nollaig na mBan (in the Irish language).
Estimated to be as old as 1,800 years, Nollaig na mBan is the day on which all the Christmas decorations must come down—not before or after—or else risk bad luck for the rest of the year. The ladies of Ireland all gather to relax and eat the last of the Christmas cake
When your on canvass
Has your work been rejected, and you
feel very much like you’ve been undeservedly knocked to the canvass?
If you’re a writer who is
submitting work for publication you will, I assure you, you will get many, many,
rejections. I can almost wallpaper a small room with the rejection slips I got
on my first book about the gangster Roger Touhy.
Look, when your on the canvass,
stay there for a while. Take in the view, relax. Don’t listen to these cold-blooded types who tell you to bounce
back up and get back into the fight. (A boxing canvas doesn’t bounce by the
way, when you hit it, it hurts because it (once again) doesn’t bounce)
While down there, putting your
pride back into order, take a few seconds to understand why your there in the
first place, and be honest with yourself. Maybe your manuscript still needs
work, maybe the guy who rejected it doesn’t know his ass from his elbow when it
comes to good writing…..cover all angles and that could mean you're staying down
there on the matt for weeks or months.
It’s Okay.
When you decide it's time to get
back up, you’ll be smarter because you will know more about our craft and the
process involved in getting published but mostly, don’t worry about it. It’s
okay.
This is some of what’s going on in the world of astronomy.
Pluto may have started hot and
contained an ocean, a massive ocean, under its crust.
There are an unknown (meaning a
lot) of rogue black holes traversing their way across our universe and we can’t
them.
Planets with large oceans are
common in the Milky Way Galaxy and astronomers estimate that there is about 6
billion earth-like planets in Galaxy.
The universe might be expanding
at a higher rate than we originally thought.
NASA has proposed a new mission
that would send a ship to visit one of Neptune's moons (Triton) and they expect
to find life there. (Bear in mind NASA version of life and our everyday version
of life are two different things)
THE MFA in writing program
I gave some more thought to
graduate school for writers. Bear in mind, this conversation doesn’t include
writers who intend on creating a life in academia teaching English….that’s
something completely different from what we’re discussing here.
For the rest of us, I think an
MFA in writing is one more way to stay in a comfort zone.
Here, let me make an example. When you’re somewhere in your mid-twenties you will most likely go to your parents for advice on a variety of subjects and you will come to realize they don't know any more about those subjects than you do. And that’s scary because now you're on your own, you have to think for yourself and figure it out for yourself because the one last bastion between you and the unknown, your parents, can’t help you anymore.
To get off track for a moment,
that isn’t all bad because at that point in your life you will develop a true
adult relationship with your parents as individuals.
Anyway, now you should come to
see the MFA program in that same light.
So many people enter the program thinking that they will learn something
they already don’t know or can’t learn on their own or that the teachers in the
program will make you a better writer but they won’t. Writing every day, seven
days a week, even when you don’t want to, makes you a better writer. Being your
own critic makes you a better writer.
The MFA in writing program is a
comfort zone and you will never succeed as a writer as long as you stay within your
comfort zone. You won’t just remain stagnant in the comfort zone; you’ll fail
as a writer. You will not find success as a writer until you step into the uncomfortable,
until you are, for lack of another way to put it, comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Occasionally writing without a defined purpose or trying a different genre just
to see if you can do it or putting years into a novel that may or may not work out, puts you out of your comfort zone and that’s where you need to be, you need to
be writing and not behind a classroom desk hoping the answer is there. The
answer is within you and it more than likely is in whatever practice in our craft that
makes you uncomfortable.
Here’s a life lesson I learned the hard way.
You can never bring somebody out
of their doldrums if it's more comfortable for them to stay there. No matter what
you say, or how good your argument is, if they want to stay down, they’ll stay
down. So walk away. While you’re walking
consider this. The negative person can very easily bring you down. They do it
all the time, all over the world. Stay away from the negative people in the
world because they are stronger in their negativity than you are in your
happiness.
Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet and screenwriter. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide.
A brief note to new writers; this was Dahl's method. It doesn't mean it will work for you. So dDevelop your own writing habits.
When fiction becomes fact: Jeffrey Epstein is alive.
Here's a theory going around the
internet about hustler Jeffrey Epstein. The theory says that the official
narrative is all made up and that Epstein is alive and well. In fairness, the facts
driving this craziness are that the cameras watching his malfunctioned…for just
the time he killed himself….that the guards in the hallway fell asleep, were brought
to justice and had all the charges against they dropped before a hearing,
Epstein’s cellmate was removed to another part of the prison and Epstein was
taken off suicide watch for no logical
reason
Anyway, the theory is that Epstein was sharp enough to earn a fortune blackmailing high-level types and to make sure that he was untouchable he set up a “dead man’s switch” so that if I were incapacitated for whatever reason, the compromising material he collected would be released to the press.
Two days before he supposedly killed
himself, the theory says, he set up a trust fund from prison to make sure that
his victims couldn't actually go after his assets after his death and that he
made the executor of that fund Bill Gates is chief science adviser.
A note to my fellow writiers
"Spend your free time the
way you like, not the way you think you’re supposed to."— Susan Cain
Here's a writing prompt; continue the thought in writing or use the sentence outright.
"Every word has consequences. Every silence, too."
Jean-Paul Sartre
I'm trying to write less and less about organized crime but this is worth showing you
The guy in this film is Mad Sam DeStefano, a true lunatic and murdered. Not a member of the Chicago mob.....he ran his own operations but paid the Outfit to operate, he was truly dangerous and crazy. Mobsters were afraid of him, which isn't good. Mobsters tend to murder people who operate outside the law and who scare them.
Below is some stuff I wrote about him years ago.
(Chicago) DeStefano, Sam: AKA Mad Sam. (Chicago) Gangster. Like most of the hoods that
controlled the Chicago mob in the 1950s through the 1970s, DeStefano came out
of the 42 gang, but unlike most of the other members of the gang, DeStefano
wasn’t born in Chicago’s little Italy. Rather, he was born and raised in middle
class surroundings in southern Illinois and moved to Chicago while he was a
teenager.
There was little doubt in law enforcement or underworld circles that that DeStefano was completely insane. Rogue cop Tommy Dorso, told the FBI, “DeStefano is not normal. Mentally, physically or spiritually... and he knows it.” Dorso went on to say that he once saw Mad Sam roll on the floor, spit running from his mouth, begging Satan to show him mercy and screaming over and over again, “I’m your servant, command me.” [1]
In the basement of his
expansive home at 1656 North Sayre Avenue in Chicago, DeStefano had a complete,
soundproofed, torture chamber. On the wall was a wooden cabinet where DeStefano
kept his weapons of choice, razor sharp ice picks, with which he used to stab
his victims in the groin and ears. When
a Chicago restaurant owner named Adler fell behind in his payments to
DeStefano’s juice operation, Destefano kidnapped him off the streets, dragged
him to his basement and stabbed him with his ice picks, killing him and then
dumping his body in a sewer drain a few blocks from his house. Police found the body was that in the spring,
the sanitation department was trying to unblock the sewer, which had backed up
and yanked out Adler’s body, which was perfectly preserved in the ice.
On September 26, 1955,
DeStefano was called at his home by a syndicate hood and told to take his
brother Michael, a known drug addict, out of a Cicero casino where he was
causing a problem. DeStefano went to the casino, took his brother out to his
own car and shot him in the head five times. Then he drove his brother’s dead
body to their brother Mario’s house, in Cicero, where he stripped the body of
its clothing, scrubbed it clean, dressed it in new clothes, put the body into a
car, drove it to a street corner in Chicago, went home and phoned the police
and told them where the body could be found.
The mobs leadership over
looked DeStefano’s madness because he produced enormous amounts of money for
the mob. In the mid 1950s, when mobsters considered loan sharking beneath their
dignity, DeStefano leaped into the business and cornered the market. The
bosses, Ricca, Accardo and Giancana, invested one hundred thousand in
DeStefano’s loan business and got a return for ten times that amount.
It was the murder of Leo
Forman that brought DeStefano down. Forman, a commercial real estate broker,
was also one of DeStefano’s collectors.
One afternoon in 1963, DeStefano was in Forman’s office and there was an
argument, which ended with Forman throwing DeStefano out of his office. A few days later, DeStefano ordered
gangsters Tony Spilotro and Chuckie Grimaldi lure Forman out to DeStefano’s
brother’s house in Cicero. Once he was there, Forman was beaten and carried
down to the basement where DeStefano was waiting, a hammer in his hand. He
hammered in Forman’s knees, head, crotch and ribs, stabbed him with an ice pick
twenty times and then shot him in the head, killing him. They dumped the body
in a trunk of a car and left it on the end of an empty street.
Ten years went by, but in
1973 the FBI turned Chuckie Grimaldi into an informant. Based on the evidence
he provided them with, federal warrants were drawn up for the arrests of
Spilotro, Mad Sam DeStefano and his brother Mario, for the murder of Leo
Forman.
At the pre-trial, DeStefano
defended himself and turned the entire proceedings into a circus. But the
government had its own tricks. It would offer DeStefano immunity for his
testimony. That was enough. The order was issued from the bosses to kill
DeStefano.
Tony Spilotro and
DeStefano’s own brother, who had been given the contract to murder Sam
DeStefano, pulled into DeStefano’s driveway on a bright and beautiful Saturday
morning. DeStefano was in the garage. When he saw the car pull in, he lifted up
the garage door and waved Mario and Spilotro inside. When they were within a
foot of DeStefano, Spilotro lifted a shotgun out from under his coat fired two
rounds into DeStefano killing him. Several months later, Spilotro and Mario
DeStefano were acquitted of all charges in the Forman killing.
A bigot by any other name.
A guy named Hussain Altamimi, a
staffer for Rep. Sandy Ocasio, called Israel a 'racist European ethnostate'
that was built on 'stolen land' on social media and he didn’t get fired or even reprimanded….you know why?
Because that’s the accepted line
of thinking in Sandy Ocasio’s office.
If you don’t have any experience on
the Hill, let me explain how it works. The second a person accepts employment in
a Hill office, that person’s social and political opinions damn well better fit
in with the Representatives line of thinking. Altamimi knows that of course. He’s been on
the Hill for a while now, bouncing from one position to another, which, if your
Jewish, should be a serious point for paranoia.
Of course, this antisemite is
entitled to his opinion, but did he really have to release it on Christmas Eve?
A night of brotherly love and peace? Of
course he did. People like him detest that sort of thing.
By the way, Altamimi also
believes that Israel has a "racial hierarchy.
The fact is Israel is filled with his fellow Palestinians, black Ethiopians, brown-skinned north Africans,
etc. However, he got around that annoying fact with
a claim that the underpinning to supposed Israeli apartheid is “It’s not about
where you’re born. It’s about whether you’re Jewish or non-Jewish. Your
ethnicity determines your rights [and] level in the racial hierarchy."
Israeli Arabs (meaning Palestinians) make up just over 20% of the country and have equal rights under the law.
Do Arab-Israelis face discrimination?
Yeah, they do. But the Israeli’s don’t have a lock on world discrimination any
more than the paler skinned Andeans of Peru and Bolivia who generally detest
the indigenous people in their country, or the whole Black and White racial
issue in the US, or the Russians and their open contempt for Gays, the Arab
states absolute hated of jews….see where I’m going with this?
Still, Altamimi believes that the
Jews, those people that the Nazis wanted to cleanse off the earth, are busy with
"The Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem" and have been ethnic cleansing
since at least 1960.
He doesn’t offer any proof for
any of this, but he’s used to spewing out this garbage unopposed from his perch
on the Hill.
When the media asked Representative
Sandy Ocasio if she had anything to say about Altamimi and his remarks, she
said no, she didn’t. I mean, you would think, that at the least, she would have
lied and said something like “When I get hold of that gosh darn Altamimi, I’m gonna
box his ears” but she didn’t. She said nothing, just like the Europeans who
said nothing when they saw the Jews being carted off to concentration camps in the
1940s.
So has Altamimi ever suffered at
the hands of the Israeli’s or even been slightly mistreated by them? No, of
course. Because he’s a victim by proxy and in his world, that's all that really matters.
Great words to know and use
Neoist: One who favors or employs new ideas, styles,
techniques, etc. From Greek neo- (new). Earliest documented use: 1916.
Insinuate comes from the Latin
root sinuare, meaning "to bend or curve." It is a synonym of imply or
suggest; however, insinuate usually conveys something unpleasant is said in a
sly or underhanded way.
Livid has a
colorful history. The Latin adjective lividus means "dull, grayish, or
leaden blue." From this came the French livide, which English borrowed as
livid. The word can describe flesh discolored by a bruise or an appearance
deficient in color. Eventually, it came to be used for the complexion of a
person pale with anger (i.e., "a person livid with rage"). From this
meaning came two new senses: "reddish," as one is as likely to become
red with anger as pale; the other was simply "angry" or "furious."
Scholars have long maintained
that each era has a unique spirit, a nature or climate that sets it apart from
all other epochs. In German, such a spirit is known as Zeitgeist, from the
German words Zeit, meaning "time," and Geist, meaning
"spirit" or "ghost."
Astute comes
from the Latin noun astus, meaning "craft." The word implies being
keenly observant and forming sound judgments based on knowledge and experience.
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS **
The Actors Studio of Newburyport, MA (TASN) is dedicated to New Play Development and will be holding its Fifth Annual Short Play Festival outdoors and over two weekends, August, 2022.Length: 5-15 minutes. Send us your best. There is no theme and there are no restrictions on content. Workshops, readings, and several previous productions are A-OK.***The Theatre of Others is seeking submissions of 20-30 minute plays for its second annual Audio New Play Festival, which will be produced in September and October 2022.This year’s prompt is “FIFTY YEARS FROM NOW.” You may interpret the prompt broadly - your play exploring whatever themes it generates for you.***In its 10th season, TEDxAsburyPark is broadening its commitment to ideas by seeking short original plays to be produced and directed at the Two River Theater Red Bank NJ as part of the April 30, 2022 TEDxAsburyPark all-day production of Joy.JOY is the theme. Any aspect of Joy is fair game. Bliss, ecstasy, happiness, contentment, sensuality, altered awareness, consciousness, mindfulness, loss of joy, anti-joy. Plays must have a running time of less than 15 minutes, involve a small cast and be suitable for a simple stage production. As a lab, our directed and rehearsed productions will involve the playwright, and all sessions, including the final production, will be recorded.*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ****** BETTY WHITE ON STAGE ***Betty White made her theater debut 60 years ago in Lancaster CountyA memento from that one-week run still hangs at the theater. The framed photograph of White has a handwritten message: “To my Ephrata friends: You were my first time ‘on stage,’ and aren’t we both thrilled to see how we can grow? So many congratulations, Love, Betty White.’”https://lancasteronline.com/features/betty-white-made-her-theater-debut-60-years-ago-in-lancaster-county/article_00175e0a-a40f-11e9-b404-5b97cb86117c.html***VIDEO: Betty White Allen Ludden Summer Stock Footage
(Bad dress rehearsal)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bqxlOBUoqk
***July 28, 1966 - Betty White and Allen Ludden will head the cast of "Bells are Ringing," which will begin a week's return engagement at Municipal Opera Monday night. Miss White, making her third appearance at the Forest Park open air theater, and Ludden, making his debut there, are husband and wife.More...https://www.newspapers.com/clip/15608454/1966-bells-are-ringing-article-muny/
***Betty White cast photo for "Take Me Along" 1961https://www.newspapers.com/clip/67812654/betty-white-top-row-left-in-take-me/
***1964 STARLIGHT THEATRE PROGRAM KANSAS CITY
ALLEN LUDDEN BETTY WHITE MR PRESIDENT
***July 29, 1955 - What's Happened to Betty White? Page 44Everybody seems to love Betty White. You'll get few arguments on that. Everyone believes she has talent. And this poses a natural question - just why, then, has her TV career been as erratic as it has?Her "Life With Elizabeth" seen locally on KTTV, has been popular throughout the country. It almost reached hit proportions - but didn't quite make the golden circle. Her NBC-TV shows of last year had large audience appeal and then it was canceled. And everyone kept right on asking, "What's happened to Betty? Why isn't she on TV?"More...https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-Life/50s/55/TV-Radio-Life-1955-07-29.pdf
***Betty White in "The King and I" in 1963"The King and I," one of the foremost musical plays resulting from the 17-year collaboration of composer Richard Rodgers and author Oscar Hammerstein II, will be the seventh attraction of the season at Municipal Opera, opening tomorrow night for a week. It will star Betty White as Anna Leonowens and Charles Korvin as the King of Siam.More...https://www.newspapers.com/clip/15284124/1963the-king-and-i-at-the-muny/
***Getting to Know You - Betty Whitehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB49Meb6J18&t=4s
***Betty White in "Life with Elizabeth"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4N8tSjoRdo&list=RDQMkNVm2r3-Eek&start_radio=1
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Art for the Blog of It: Art for the Pop of It: Wayne Thiebaud.
Art for the Blog of It: Art for the Pop of It: Wayne Thiebaud.: Art for the Pop of It: Wayne Thiebaud. :
Big winner....sort of
On some game shows, contestants can win new cars, all-expense-paid vacation, and cash. But there is tax to be paid on those gifts which makes the gift not worth the taking. Bear in mind, in California, where most of these shows are filmed, the tax is due upfront. And there’s no getting around it. Winning contestants are handed a 1099G form from the show before they leave the studio. Also, winning big prize money or prizes can place the receiver into another tax bracket.
UFO stories
The Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter occurred at approximately 2:45
AM on July 24, 1948, in the skies near Montgomery, Alabama. That day, two
commercial pilots (Chiles and Whitted) claimed to have observed a "glowing
object" pass by their plane before it appeared to pull up into a cloud and
travel out of sight.
After landing in Atlanta, Georgia, the pilots reported their
sightings to the United States Air Force and were interviewed for Project Sign,
the first Air Force research group assigned to investigate UFO sightings. The
pilots were both combat-experienced and gave painstaking into what they had
seen so much so that the investigators agreed that “this was the first time two
reliable sources had been really close enough to a UFO to get a good
look."
However, the top brass rejected the investigation results because
"the report's evidence was insufficient to support its conclusions."
and concluded that the pilots had actually seen a very bright meteor.
The UFO’s of Wythe County
Wythe County Virginia is just southwest of Blacksburg. Named for
George Wythe, the first Virginian to sign the Declaration of Independence and
was partially settled by Moses Austin, father of Stephen F. Auston, one of the
founders of the Republic of Texas.
In October 1987, Wythe County Sheriff Wayne Pike reported that
he and his deputies witnessed strange lights in the sky. The police report made
the wire services and within a year there were 3,000 reports of UFO sightings
in the area. Some said the county was experiencing mass hysteria.
The most famous incident in the rash sighting actually happened
in nearby Smyth County when a UFO was seen flying across a mountainside and
blasting a tree with its heat-ray. Investigators checked out the tree stump, but
it appeared that someone had tried to smoke a squirrel out of the tree and set
a fire that built up inside the trunk until it literally blew up.
The people of Wythe said otherwise. Many blamed the US Air
Force, claiming that the sightings were part of a secret military operation.
Included in that group was Danny Gordon, the news director for the local radio
station WYVE. "It appears,” he said, “we are dealing with something of a
military nature "A lot of people are scared. Will the military please tell
us where they are?"
The Gorman/UFO dogfight
The Gorman dogfight took place on October 1, 1948, in the skies
over Fargo, North Dakota although in 1949 the USAF concluded…of course… that
the Gorman dogfight had been caused by a lighted weather balloon…you think they
would get tired of using that excuse.
Only 25 years old when the incident occurred, George F. Gorman
was a veteran fighter pilot of World War II and was serving as a second
lieutenant in the North Dakota National Guard.
On October 1, 1948, Gorman was participating in a cross-country
flight with other National Guard pilots, flying a P-51 Mustang. His flight
arrived over Fargo at approximately 8:30 PM.
Although the other pilots decided to land at Fargo's Hector
Airport, Gorman decided to take advantage of the clear, cloudless conditions
and get in some night-flying time, staying aloft.
Around 9:00 PM Gorman saw another object to his west that had a
blinking light. At 9:07 PM Gorman contacted the control tower at Hector Airport
and asked if it had any air traffic in the area other than his P-51 and the
Piper Cub. The tower answered no, he was alone up there as far as radar was
concerned. But the Piper Cub pilot, Dr. A.D. Cannon and his passenger answered
that they could also see a lighted object to the west.
Gorman told the tower that he was going to pursue the object to
determine its identity. He moved his Mustang to full power (350 to 400 MPH),
but the object was going too fast for him to catch it
Instead, he tried cutting the object off by turns and approached
the object head-on at 5,000 feet but the object flew over his plane at a
distance of about 500 feet. Gorman described the object as a simple "ball
of light" about six to eight inches in diameter. He also noted later that
when the object increased its speed, it stopped blinking and grew brighter.
After a near-collision, Gorman lost sight of the object; when he
saw it again it appeared to have made a 180-degree turn and was coming at him
again. The object then made a sudden vertical climb; Gorman followed the object
in his own steep climb. At 14,000 feet his P-51 stalled; the object was still
2,000 feet above him. The object made another head-on pass but broke off before
coming close to his fighter. It then moved over Hector Airport where it was
seen by the air traffic controller, L.D. Jensen.
Gorman followed the object until he was about twenty-five miles
southwest of Fargo. At 14,000 feet he observed the light at 11,000 feet; he
then dived on the object at full power. However, the object made a vertical
climb. He tried to pursue but watched as the object passed out of visual range.
At this point he broke off the chase; it was 9:27 PM. Gorman flew back to
Hector Airport.
Within a few hours, military officers from Project Sign – the
United States Air Force's (USAF) study of UFO phenomena – arrived to interview
Gorman, Dr. Cannon, his passenger, and the control tower personnel at Hector
Airport. The officers also checked Gorman's P-51 Mustang with a Geiger counter
for radiation. They found that the Mustang was measurably more radioactive than
other fighters which had not flown for several days; this was taken as evidence
that Gorman had flown close to an "atomic-powered" object.
However, the Air Weather Service revealed that on October 1 it
had released a lighted weather balloon from Fargo at 8:50 PM. By 9 PM the
balloon would have been in the area where Gorman and the Piper Cub passengers
first saw the lighted object. Project Sign's investigators also believed that
the incredible movements of the object were due to Gorman's own maneuvers as he
chased the light—the object's maneuvers were an illusion brought about by the
movements of Gorman's fighter.
Several branches of the military did come forward but only to deny
they had anything to do with sightings. However, the Tennessee Air National
Guard did come forward to suggest that the sightings began at about the same
time that they started making refueling flights in the area.
Since the most common sighting were of a group of lights that
appear to hover close together before splitting apart in the night skies while
others have reported a flying object that appears to be pulling another object
along, a mid-air refueling seemed to make sense.
A spokesman for the Tennessee Air National Guard said "We
started doing them more frequently in that area about a month or a month and a
half ago. I personally haven't seen anything up there. It'd certainly be a good
guess. That'd be the best answer I could offer."
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