The SOUTH ORANGE COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT —
"[The] blog he developed was something that made the district better." - Tim Jemal, SOCCCD BoT President, 7/24/23
.....When...26-year-old [Greg Burger] found out about the John McCain-Barack Obama forum at Saddleback Church this Saturday, he did what a lot of people did: He checked the church Web site as often as he could to get the most up-to-date ticket information. ....."I knew my only chance to receive tickets would be to act fast," Burger said. .....For the past couple of weeks, the general public had been told via the church's Web site that ticket information would be forthcoming. .....Then last week, the message changed and said a limited number of tickets would be available this Wednesday. Monday night, the message was revised again, saying all tickets had been distributed. .....The switcheroo left many people like Burger feeling like they were deceived.
.....You bet. Nobody likes a switcheroo. .....And what about those absurdly high ticket prices ($500 for the cheap seats)? .....According to the Reg, "The high prices raised eyebrows." .....Warren had better get his act together. Soon, he's hosting an event with former British Prime Minister Tony B. Watch 'im mess that up too.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the release, today, of tens of thousands of top-secret personnel files for the OSS—the WW II forerunner to the CIA. (Newly released files detail early US spy network.)
Naturally, we’ll hear lots about Julia Child’s file. But I wanted to focus on another former agent: character actor Sterling Hayden (1916-1986).
Most will remember him, I suppose, as the actor who played General Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove. He was a good actor, a terrific screen presence. He did a fair amount of film noire and lots of westerns.
Hayden started out a seaman, but, after nine years at sea, somehow, he switched to modeling and acting, which he hated. According to Wikipedia:
His first film starred Madeleine Carroll, with whom he fell in love and married. But after just two film roles, he left Hollywood to serve as an undercover agent with William J. Donovan's COI office. He remained there after it became the OSS. Hayden also joined the Marines under the name John Hamilton…. His World War II service included running guns through German lines to the Yugoslav partisans and parachuting into fascist Croatia. He won the Silver Star and a commendation from Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito.
His Yugoslavian experience led to his briefly joining the Communist party. According to his IMDb biography,
he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee, confessing his brief Communist ties. Ever after regretted this action, holding himself in enormous contempt for what he considered "ratting".
I always assumed that Hayden wasn’t interesting except as an actor and squealer. But a perusal of his biography debunks such notions. He was obviously a complex, literate man. Loved sailing. Acted to pay for that.
IMDb lists some Hayden quotations:
• [On his films] Bastards, most of them, conceived in contempt of life and spewn out onto screens across the world with noxious ballyhoo; saying nothing, contemptuous of the truth, sullen, and lecherous.
• [On confessing his Communist ties] I don't think you have the foggiest notion of the contempt I have had for myself since the day I did that thing . . . It's the one thing in my life that I'm categorically ashamed of.
• [After shooting Johnny Guitar (1954)] There is not enough money in Hollywood to lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford. And I like money
• [On acting] You don't need talent to star in a motion picture. All you need is some intelligence AND the ability to work freely in front of the lens. Why do I always freeze? I went through the war. I jumped out of bombers. I played kick-the-can with E-boats when all we had was a lousy 40-foot dragger with six machine guns and a top speed of six knots. Yet whenever I get a closeup in a nice warm studio, I curl up and die.
• [On the Yugoslavian Partisans] It seems to me the people in the [Communist] Party not only know what's going on in the world but they have the guts to determine a course of action . . . In Yugoslavia . . . when the going got rough and it was time to be counted, it was the Communists who stood up and fought.
• [On director Stanley Kubrick] By the time of [Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)] [Kubrick] had become very human -- maybe it was the power that came with successes like Lolita (1962) -- for he is now very strong. My first day was torture. I was nervous, scared, did 48 takes. I expected Kubrick to explode but instead he was gentle, calmed me, convinced me that the fear in my eyes would help the character.
• [On director Bernardo Bertolucci] Bertolucci is not like most directors I've worked with; there's something beautiful, crazy, special about him. He's funny, too. He operates like a writer. No one knows what he's going to do. Several million dollars are riding on him alone. He has the power, he goes ahead, upsets those who plan schedules, takes his own time, follows his own genius.
Hayden in Strangelove: "precious bodily fluids" (1964)
Trailer for "Crime Wave"/"The City is Dark" (1954)
• The OC Register (Cheney confronts San Clemente protesters with a smile) reports that two dozen or so people participated in a peaceful protest outside the gate of Casa Assh*le in San Clemente yesterday, where Vice President Dick “S & W” Cheney attended a private fundraiser honoring Ken “Hooker” Calvert. Maybe 200 people attended the fundraiser, checkbooks in hand.
I guess it was a kind of auction.
Meanwhile, outside the gates, protesters yelled “war criminal” and such. One sign read, “McCain=Bush III.” Referring to Cheney, one protester opined, “It was almost like they were welcoming O.J. Simpson to Orange County.” That’s pretty good, although Simpson only killed two people, y’know, and he didn’t make any money doing it.
The Reg reporter talked to that rat bastard Calvert, who explained that “the president has kept us safe the last eight years.”
Well, at first, the guy just phoned the store, ‘cause the computer had missing parts. Turns out this computer is pretty distinctive, and the parts it needs are distinctive too. So employees got suspicious; they asked for the serial number. Bingo.
The next part of the story helps explain why I read the paper each morning:
Employees called the police, who were present at the building when the man showed up, but were unable to make it to the entrance before he left the scene.
• This next story is pretty special too. According to Inside Higher Ed, some guy is in the hot seat over a situation that arose when he was chancellor of North Carolina Central University, in Mayberry. During this fellow's chancellorship, the university
started a degree-granting program in a church outside of Atlanta, run by a donor and board member, without the permission of North Carolina officials or accreditors.
That nobody was told about this program is special all by itself. That it was at a church is good, too. But that this thing was run by a trustee and donor puts this way over the top.
• Meanwhile (again, according to Inside Higher Ed), “San Jose State University’s English department has announced the 2008 ‘winners’ of its Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which honors the worst possible opening lines for fiction.”
Here’s the winning entry:
“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’”
I don’t get it. That’s a great opening line. Imagine the illustrations!
.....Looks like I'm not the only one peeved about Rick Warren/Saddleback Church's handling of tickets for Saturday's Obama/McCain forum. (See our It's the old Saddleback Church shuffle.)
