Moses Passeth

Charlton Heston has passed.

No matter how I may have disagreed with Mr. Heston on issues, I acknowledge that there are a few great Heston movies.

My favorites:

The Greatest Show on Earth
The Omega Man
Planet of the Apes
The Three Musketeers (But not because of him. See Oliver Reed, Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee, and Raquel Welch)
Midway (Ok, I like Toro Toro Toro, too. It's a WWII thing...)

My semi-favorites:
Earthquake
Airport 1975
Soylent Green

Rest in Peace, Mr. Heston. And thank you. For the movies at least.

Mark This Number

4,000

I was just saying on New Year's Eve...

... that I would like to one day eat at Sardi's... when word came along today that Vincent Sardi, Jr., son of the founder of that famous Times Square establishment, passed away. Another New York ending, another New York era.

From the New York Times:

Mr. Sardi ran one of the world’s most famous restaurants, a Broadway institution as central to the life of the theater as actors, agents and critics. It was, the press agent Richard Maney once wrote, “the club, mess hall, lounge, post office, saloon and marketplace of the people of the theater.”

Mr. Sardi understood theater people, loved them and was loved in return. He carried out-of-work actors, letting them run up a tab until their ship came in. (At one point, Sardi’s maintained 600 such accounts.)

He attended every show and made sure his headwaiters did the same, so that they could recognize even bit players and make a fuss over them. At times, he exercised what he called “a fine Italian hand,” seating a hungry actor near a producer with a suitable part to cast.

He commiserated with his patrons when a show failed, and rejoiced with them when the critics were kind. He distributed favors, theater tickets and food, rode on horseback with the local police, and acted as a spokesman, official and unofficial, for the theater district.

Mr. Sardi was born on July 23, 1915, in Manhattan and spent his early childhood in a railroad flat on West 56th Street, where his parents took in show-business boarders. In 1921, his father took over a basement restaurant in a brownstone at 246 West 44th Street.

The Great White Way bows its head to you in thanks and farewell.

R.I.P.: 2nd Lt. Emily Perez

Second Lieutenant Emily J.T. Perez graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point in 2005. At West Point, she was the first black woman to serve as corps commander sergeant major, and finished academically in the top 10 percent of her class.

In Iraq, she served as a Medical Service Corps Officer and was assigned to the 204th Support Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. She deployed in December 2005.

She died in Al Kifl, Iraq on September 12, 2006. She was 23 years old.



Thank you, and rest in peace, and I'm sorry.

Sign a legacy guest book for her family here.

The Daily Kos has more information on this remarkable young woman and American patriot.

My Dad

May 23, 1930 - August 24, 2006
Love You. Miss You.

Writing Can Get You Murdered

I was thinking about my plagiarism rant the other day, when I came across a Yahoo! News story regarding Dutch Muslim Hirsi Ali.

If you haven't heard of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, then more than likely you've heard of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who was shot to death on the streets of Amsterdam by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch Muslim who was part of a group upset at van Gogh's directing of Ali's short film, "Submission." Bouyeri shot van Gogh eight times, then for added good measure, slit his throat, stabbed him in the chest, and left two knives lodged there, one of which pinned a five-page manifesto from Bouyeri's group, the Hofstad Network. The note text can be found here.

Why?

Partly because "Submission" was a short piece written in regards to the violence that can follow Muslim women. The piece showed passages unfavorable to women from the Koran. In the film, the words were projected on a woman's semi-naked body, a woman who had just been beaten and raped by a relative. The film's purpose was to expose the treatment of Muslim women, and hopefully begin a dialogue to change certain tenets of the Muslim faith, a Muslim Reformation, if you will.

After van Gogh's death (he was the great-grandson of Theodore van Gogh, artist Vincent van Gogh's brother), Ali went into hiding for fear of her own life. Her story is one of a Somali woman who was pawned off in marriage by her politician father to a Canadian cousin. Instead of going to Canada, Ali made her way to the Netherlands, eventually becoming an atheist, an outspoken critic of Islam and urger of reform, and a member of the Dutch Parliament. She has written several books, and a new one, The Caged Virgin : An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, comes out tomorrow while Ali is coming to the States to promote her work. A work that can literally get her killed, maybe with a few knives stuck in her chest or maybe something else even more heinous just to make a point.

Whatever one may feel about Ali and her work, whether it's too over the top, unbalanced or one-sided, at least she speaks out regardless of the danger to her own self and safety. Which sorta brings me back to my original rant about plagiarism.

Writing can get you murdered.
Writing can get you hunted.
Writing can topple goverments and cause powerful men to fall.

Wrecking the sanctity of writing and getting published and telling a story by fabricating or stealing other people's stuff is like betraying all the writers who died risking their necks to make people free or convince people of another way. So when I personally hear of people plagiarising (and truthfully getting hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so), it gets my hackles up.

Not all writing is sacred or even good (hey, I'm a case in point), nor here nor there. But I figure if it gets to the point that you are published in a book or a journal or even on the web, then it better be original and it better be yours or it better be attributed, cause writing can get you murdered and ultimately, that's no laughing matter.

Condolences to the Reeve and Parks Families

It's one painful whammy to lose your dad to a horrible and paralyzing accident; it's yet another painful whammy to lose your mom from a disease that usually claims those who have a vice such as smoking, coming completely out of the blue. To lose both of them both in little more than a year must be a living hell.

When I heard about the death of actress, philanthropist and devoted wife and mother, Diane Reeve (the wife of actor Christopher Reeve, who died in 2004 from a long bout of paralysis after a riding accident) today due to lung cancer, I was so saddened by the Reeve family double whammy. My sincere condolences go out to their children, especially young Will Reeve, who's lost both of his parents at such a young age.

In fact, my sincere sympathy goes out for all kids who have to go through this, losing their parents either through disease, accident or war.

I saw Christopher Reeve speak at New York's Winter Garden in Battery Park back in 2000 or so. I was a caterwaiter at a fundraising event for his foundation. It was difficult to see Mr. Reeve paralyzed as he was. I remember how sad the other waiters and I were. It was difficult to watch him breath slowly, speak, and then breathe again, by the help of a ventilator. I felt, however, that I was truly fortunate to witness a man with such stamina and integrity. In fact, it was one of the small moments in my life that helped me break free of depression. Reeve, despite his evident problems, seemed generally happy.

May we all be so lucky in the face of it.

A Happier Moment

On another note of passing, Gordon Parks, an icon of the African-American community for more than 70 years, died today as well.

When it rains, it pours.

Ella Watson, U.S. Government Charwoman
by Gordon Parks

Wonder Kitty Says Her Last Goodbye

She tried her best, my brave little wonder kitty, but in the end, it was all too much. But at least we tried. Either way, it's the same outcome, only we were both hoping the end result would be a few more years. She'll be missed something awful. I love you, kitty girl, I love ya.

Zanzibar
June 5, 1994 - January 26, 2006

The Experience of Life: Death

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream --
Lingering in the golden dream --
Life, what is it but a dream?
--Lewis Carroll, "A Boat beneath a Sunny Sky"

I remember, as a kid, my first nightmare about being dead. I was laying in a casket, under the earth, and I couldn't get out. I knew I was still alive, that I shouldn't have been in that casket, and there was no way out.

I woke up screaming, in my bed, alive.

Now, I'm not sure why I had this dream. I may have read one too many Edgar Allan Poe stories by that time, and I do remember watching a very terrifying movie, the name of which escapes me right now. It was about a person who was kidnapped, and then buried alive with a water tube, light, and no means of communication with the outside, above-ground world. The air supply was limited, and tied into the time that the ransom had to be paid. I'm sure someone remembers the name of this movie!

A friend of mine's dad died recently, and I went to the funeral. It was a beautiful goodbye. I haven't had anyone really close to me pass away yet. Now that I face the impending passing of my cat (she's still strong, but the heart disease is irreversible and I have a feeling that it's going to be within the next six months), as well as the aging of my parents, and hell, even myself, the life experience of death is inevitable.

Kitties and people don't live forever. But life is so damned short that I don't understand why people are continually at each other's throats with war, hatred, and a myriad of other social ills and complaints that put us on a blood rage against each other.

Life. Is. Too. Damned. Short.

When I was growing up, my mother found Pentacostal religion and took me to church every Sunday for five-hour services for about 12 years. Most of what I got out of the sessions was that I was bad, gospel music was good, and everyone thought way too much about the afterlife and not this life. It was all about the future, what happens when you die, if you're not right by God. There's so much focus on death that it's hard to actually live life.

Life. Is. Too. Damned. Short.

As I approach a close experience of death (the first of what will be many) I'm going to try my best to remember that life, though not good, is here and should be lived to the fullest. I hope that somehow, we all learn one lesson: life is too damn short to kill each other.

Dear Mrs. Parks

On behalf of my parents and my entire family, thank you for your courage.
Rest in Peace