Thursday, October 27, 2011

1984½ (beauty and the beast)




Big Brother?

(I know you think you're awful square, but you made everyone and you've been everywhere.)


Adam and Evey

1984½


(The Lovers)












Masks of God



(V used to have Justice for a lover, but she betrayed him, became another whore to the PTB. He chose a new lover.)






(Keeping in mind that V and Anakin are both the Great Beast . . .)



Mark Hamill unmasks God: The real Maria [Isis unveiled] and false Maria [the Fool's robot lover] fight

Air Force: "Well, if it isn't Smokey the Babe!"



. . .

10/25:

'1Q84': Murakami's Orwellian Best-Seller Now In U.S.



The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver's enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 - "Q" is for "question mark". A world that bears a question.

Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.

As Aomame's and Tengo's narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.

A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell's, 1Q84 is Haruki Murakami's most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.~(publisher's summary)


In October 1985, New York City police are investigating the murder of Edward Blake. With the police having no leads, costumed vigilante Rorschach decides to probe further. Discovering Blake to be the face behind The Comedian, a costumed hero employed by the United States government, Rorschach believes he has discovered a plot to terminate costumed adventurers and sets about warning four of his retired comrades: Dan Dreiberg (formerly the second Nite Owl), the superpowered and emotionally detached Doctor Manhattan and his lover Laurie Juspeczyk (the second Silk Spectre), and Adrian Veidt (once the hero Ozymandias, and now a successful businessman).~Wikipedia


"When they look at me, they see what they are."


Watergate tapes: 18 minutes missing from Nixon's tapes
Contact (through the Water Gate): 18 hours missing from Arroway's tapes


With the repeal of the 22nd Amendment and the suspicious murders ofWashington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (also thought to have committed by The Comedian), who would otherwise have exposed the Watergate Scandal, Nixon is reelected repeatedly, and still serves as President in 1985.


  • Besides portraying Clara Clayton Brown, the mother of Jules and Verne, actress Mary Steenburgen played the role of Richard Nixon's devout Quaker mother, Hannah, in Oliver Stone's 1995 film Nixon.
  • Nixon is also still president in Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchmen, which is also set in the alternate reality of October 1985.

Hearts in Atlantis tells the story of Robert "Bobby" Garfield (David Morse), a middle-aged man recollecting his past, in particular the summer when he was eleven years old (Anton Yelchin). During that summer, he and his two friends, Carol Gerber (Mika Boorem) and John "Sully" Sullivan (Will Rothhaar), experienced many things together, the most mysterious of which was meeting an elderly drifter named Ted Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins).

Bobby lives with his single mother, the self-centered Liz Garfield (Hope Davis), who takes in Brautigan as a boarder. Ted takes the lonely Bobby under his wing, while his mother is busy with her job - including entertaining her boss as a way of paying off debt supposedly left by Bobby's late father. The two form a father-son bond, and it slowly becomes clear that Ted has some psychic and telekinetic powers that rub off on the young boy. These same powers are the reason that Brautigan has come to this sleepy town; he has escaped the grasp of the "Low Men", strange people who would stop at nothing to get their hands on Ted.

Ted offers Bobby a job—his eyes aren't as good as they used to be, so he asks the boy to read a newspaper for him, and to earn a dollar a week, so Bobby could buy a bicycle he wants. Bobby doesn't believe that this is the real job, and he is right. Ted asks Bobby to keep an eye on the neighborhood looking for any signs of the "low men", like announcements about missing pets. Bobby sees one, but doesn't tell Ted, afraid to lose his new friend.

Bobby, Jim and Carol, and John have frequent conflicts with the local town bully, Harry Doolin (Tommy Reifsnyder), whom Ted is able to scare away by looking into his mind and finding out that his violence is used to cover up the fact that he is secretly a cross-dresser. However, at one point, Harry hurts Carol, and when Ted manipulates her dislocated shoulder into place, Liz arrives, after being raped by her boss, and mistakenly believes that Ted is a child molester. She is confronted by Ted's ability to tell her the truth about what she has been through, and how her behavior is affecting her relationship with her son, providing another reason that Ted must leave. That and the "low men" are closing in on him.

Ted is eventually captured with the help of a tip from Liz. As some form of closure, Ted yells to Bobby as he is being driven away that he wouldn't have missed a moment "not for all the world", and later Bobby mirrors the same feelings.

At the end of the film, a grown up Bobby meets a girl who turns out to be Carol's daughter~Wikipedia

"God"

In this alternate history the corrupt US President Ferris F Fremont (FFF for 666, Number of the Beast) becomes Chief Executive in the late Nineteen-Sixties following Lyndon Johnson's administration. The character is best described as an amalgam of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, who abrogates civil liberties and human rights through positing a conspiracy theory centered around a (presumably) fictitious subversive organization known as "Aramchek". In addition to this, he is associated with a right-wing populist movement called "Friends of the American People" (Fappers).

Ironically enough, the President's paranoia and opportunism lead to the establishment of a real resistance movement that is organized through narrow-beam radio transmissions from a mysterious alien near-Earth satellite, by a superintelligent, extraterrestrial, but less than omnipotent being (or network) named VALIS.~Wikipedia


"So they call it VALIS," Kevin said, "and make it an ancient satellite that's controlling people to remove an evil tyranny that grips the United States -- obviously based on Richard Nixon."

I said, "Are we to assume that the film Valis is telling us that Zebra or God or VALIS or three-eyed people from Sirius removed Nixon from office?"

"Yep," Kevin said.

To Fat, I said, "Didn't the three-eyed Sibyl you dreamed about talk about 'conspirators who had been seen and would be taken care of?'"

"In August 1974," Fat said.

Kevin, harshly, said, "That's the month and year Nixon resigned." (Philip K. Dick, VALIS)

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

(Where the pit becomes the tip . . .)


the big bang ... creating life, the universe and everything
(makin' babies)


"I think we've lost him."

'ALBINI RELISHES UNDERDOG ROLE?'
'Yes, please read that.'
Ted listened closely as he painstakingly shaved his throat. Bobby himself found the story less than riveting - it wasn't about Floyd Patterson or Ingemar Johansson, after all (Sully called the Swedish heavyweight 'Ingie-Baby') - but he read it carefully, nevertheless. The twelve-rounder between Tommy 'Hurricane' Haywood and Eddie Albini was scheduled for Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night of the following week. Both fighters had good records, but age was considered an important, perhaps telling factor: Haywood, twenty-three to Eddie Albini's thirty-six, and a heavy favorite. The winner might get a shot at the heavyweight title in the fall, probably around the time Richard Nixon won the Presidency (Bobby's mom said that was sure to happen, and a good thing - never mind that Kennedy was a Catholic, he was just too young, and apt to be a hothead).
In the article Albini said he could understand why he was the underdog - he was getting up in years a little and some folks thought he was past it because he'd lost by a TKO to Sugar Boy Masters in his last fight. And sure, he knew that Haywood outreached him and was supposed to be mighty savvy for a younger fellow. But he'd been training hard, Albini said, skipping a lot of rope and sparring with a guy who moved and jabbed like Haywood. The article was full of words like game and determined', Albini was described as being 'full of grit.' Bobby could tell the writer thought Albini was going to get the stuffing knocked out of him and felt sorry for him. Hurricane Haywood hadn't been available to talk to the reporter, but his manager, a fellow named I. Kleindienst (Ted told Bobby how to pronounce the name), said it was likely to be Eddie Albini's last fight. 'He had his day, but his day is over,' I. Kleindienst said. 'If Eddie goes six, I'm going to send my boy to bed without his supper.'
'Irving Kleindienst's a ka-mai,' Ted said.
'A what?'
'A fool.' Ted was looking out the window toward the sound of Mrs O'Hara's dog. Not totally blank the way he sometimes went blank, but distant.
'You know him?' Bobby asked.
'No, no,' Ted said. He seemed first startled by the idea, then amused.
'Know of him.'
'It sounds to me like this guy Albini's gonna get creamed.'
'You never know. That's what makes it interesting.'
'What do you mean?'
'Nothing. Go to the comics, Bobby. I want Flash Gordon. And be sure to tell me what Dale Arden's wearing.'
'Why?'
'Because I think she's a real hotsy-totsy,' Ted said, and Bobby burst out laughing. He couldn't help it. Sometimes Ted was a real card.
~Low Men In Yellow Coats (chapter v)












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Nov. 6th Drudge top headline: 2_11 (2K or KK)

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