July 02, 2009
Friday Flickers: Gun Crazy
By 1950, the Hollywood studio system was in steep decline. Television was flattening the landscape, and because stars were no longer under contract to the studios, the star system—invented by L.B. Mayer—was all but dead.
It was a bad time for American movies.
The last great film genre was also quickly fading.
Film noir, black or dark films, a post WWII phenomenon, was characterized by dark, urban landscapes where dangerous dames seduced cynical men into crime, betrayal, and death.
Gun Crazy, 1950, is one of the last, great noir movies.
But it doesn't fit neatly into the noir category because much of the story takes place in wide open rural spaces—which, to me, gives the film so much power. We don't expect noir in the mid-west.
John Dall plays Bart Tare, a young man who has always liked guns. He gets into a world of trouble when, as a kid, he breaks into a store to steal a six-shooter. Bart's friends explain to the judge that Bart likes gun, but he would never kill anything. He won't even kill an animal.
File away that last piece of information as the major set-up of the film.
For every movie set-up, you have to provide a payoff.
And the payoff in Gun Crazy is perfect.
No spoilers here, you must watch this film.
After getting out of the army, Bart attends a carnival where he meets sharpshooter, Annie Laurie Starr—“So beautiful, so dangerous...”— played by Welsh born Peggy Cummins—her voice is mesmerizing, like a finely-tuned musical instrument.
Annie and Bart engage in a sharp shooting contest. It's one of the most erotic sequences in movie history for the man and woman—gunslingers in heat—are doing a mating dance as they blast away.
Later, Bart sums up their relationship:
“We go together, Annie. I don't know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together.”
Annie and Bart end up on the road, broke, and Annie talks the reluctant Bart into committing a robbery:
"I told you I'm a bad girl, didn't ?"
Soon, Bart and Peggy are on a full throttle crime spree and the cops are closing in on the doomed couple.
The clip I've chosen is, to my mind, the greatest bank heist in movie history.
It's done in one take. Dall and Cummings, dressed in their carnival outfits, improvise dialog as they drive down the highway, enter a town—the scene was shot in Montrose, CA—and cruise to a stop outside the bank. Because the scene is shot in one take, in real time, the suspense is nearly unbearable.
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a miraculous Shabbat.
Have a wonderful July 4th weekend and keep in mind that freedom is never free.
And hey, Jewish Democrats have been hit, en masse, with a deadly ailment: Cognitive Dissonance.
Meanwhile, Barack Hussein Obama, has finally chosen sides in Iran. Want to to take a guess where The Dear Leader stands?
Pop Quiz: What's the difference between The Washington Post and a prostitute?
Answer: Nothing.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 04:31 PM in Friday Flickers | Comments (4)
Full Body Shmatte and the Assault on Civilization
Recently, France banned the burqa—excellent move—and of course, Al Qaeda has promised revenge.
I'm sure the ACLU would argue that if you ban the burqa the next step is banning yarmulkes.
But honestly, those who wear yarmulkes—Orthodox Jews like yours truly—are not seeking to undermine the West and replace democratic, freedom loving societies with a barbaric 7th Century Islamic theocracy where Jews are eliminated, homosexuals are hanged, public beheadings are frequent, women are stoned to death, and all minority religions are oppressed.
Let's face it, the burqa is part and parcel of the Islamist war against western civilization.
Pop Quiz: To whom do you think the women wearing burqas are married?
The first rule of war is: know your enemy.
Predictably, Barack Hussein Obama chooses to turn this bit of obvious wisdom on its head. Like all leftists, Obama redefines enemies as friends and friends as enemies.
In leftist circles— a group deeply attracted to totalitarian impulses—this is called “nuanced thinking.”
Pat Condell makes you laugh out loud, but as with all great comedy, his observations have the unmistakable ring of truth.
New York has a law, dating from 1845, that allows loitering charges against someone who is "masked or in any manner disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration."
Simply put, the masks are a security threat.
Naturally, the KKK claims that the law is unconstitutional.
I am not a lawyer and I have no idea if it's unconstitutional or not.
I'm just an average American citizen with some common sense, and I don't believe that the Constitution is a document that compels national suicide.
Further, it seems to me that masked people—we have no idea if they're male or female, because they're wearing full body shmattes—are an implicit threat to civilized society.
I mean, look, when a masked, uh, thing, walks into a bank, what's the natural reaction?
You shoot them.
It's called self-defense.
Phyllis Chesler explores the issue of banning the burqa in America. She's also taking a poll and I voted, duh, Yes.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 06:31 AM in Jihad Watch | Comments (14)
July 01, 2009
No No No, Which Really Means, No
I'm often told by those who usually know nothing about the Arab-Israeli conflict that: “It's complicated.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Arabs have consistently rejected the notion of a Jewish homeland, denied the basic facts of Jewish history, and said, “No, No, No” to every overture for a peaceful settlement that envisions anything less than the destruction of Israel.
let's be clear, the conflict is not geographical but ideological.
Islam violently rejects the notion of a Jewish State.
Here's a short video that traces Arab rejectionism, a polite term for incipient genocide.
But have no fear, Barack Hussein Obama is going to fix everything—by saying “No” to you know who.
But yes, yes, yes, to Muslim states.
Thus, the Netanyahu government will be saying no to Obama's July 4 picnics.
And to think, 78% of American Jews voted for Obama.
Not only is Mr. Hope and Change destroying the American economy with a push towards European type Socialism, but he's ideologically driven against the State of Israel and in the process of detonating relations between America and the Jewish State with the fervor of a true leftist believer.
Shocking, huh?
Who said Jews are smart?
And, hey, congratulations to Minnesota for electing this man to the Senate.
Just goes to show what you can achieve when you change the rules.
Well, as I said about Barack Hussein Obama: bad for America, good for blogging.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:05 AM in Israel | Comments (4)
June 30, 2009
Obama's Plan to Bankrupt America in One Easy Lesson
Bridge for sale. No money down. Easy monthly payments.
Okay, I'm no math genius. Certainly, your faithful screenwriter is not an economist.
But I do have common sense.
I understand that people should spend less than they earn in order to remain solvent and build wealth through a disciplined program of diversified investments.
But I also understand that the federal government can and does function running a moderate deficit.
As always in life, it's a matter of degrees.
Here's a brilliant, hence simple, two-minute explanation of Obamanomics.
Warning: Fasten your seat belts.
H/T Joshua Pundit
Okay, class, how is Barack Hussein Obama, our ideologue-in-chief, going to finance this spending spree?
Waving hand in air furiously: “I know, I know, teacher, green jobs.”
If you believe that fantasy, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you. Green jobs are, as Howling Wolf explains, a canard.
No, the correct answer is:
Taxes.
Duh.
Obama plans to tax you.
Yes, I'm talking to you.
Obama—a man who has never run a business, handled a payroll, or generated wealth for anyone but himself with two Oprah-designed autobiographies—promised to tax only the wealthy—making 250K a year makes you wealthy,
But that was a bold faced campaign lie.
The middle class, as always, will bear the burden of Obama's crushing taxes. It's not complicated, 5% of the American population cannot support the entire federal budget.
Let's be clear, Obama is not interested in building wealth. His aim is to redistribute wealth.
And even Obama must know—uh, maybe not—that the fed can't keep printing money or we'll end up with Zimbabwe-like inflation, hauling wheelbarrows of cash in order to buy a loaf of bread.
Obama's state planned economy follows a familiar pattern.
We see this form of governance in western European socialist states where taxes are high, unemployment is in the double digits, and national health care is parsimoniously rationed by bean-counting government bureaucrats.
When our son Ariel ZT'L was ill with cancer and we practically lived in Oncology wards, we kept meeting patients from France, England, and Canada.
Why, we inquired, were they receiving medical care in America?
The answer was always the same: they were forced to wait, and wait and wait for critical treatment. They were so ill that they had been shunted aside for “better prospects.” They had to wait months for a simple MRI.
They wanted to live.
Hope and change.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 06:08 AM in Obama Watch | Comments (24)
June 29, 2009
Israel's Twin Enemies
The blood of Iranian dissidents runs in the streets of Tehran, but the Obama administration is still anxious to talk with the mullahs about their nuclear program because, well, the Islamic tyrants are obviously so reasonable.
You see, Barack Hussein Obama does not want to meddle—no soaring rhetoric for those who are begging for it—in Iranian politics because, according to the Obama doctrine, all regimes are sacrosanct and we Americans don't have the moral authority to distinguish between good and evil, democracies and totalitarian states.
Except when it comes to Israel.
Jooz, for Obama, are another matter.
Not only does Obama feel obliged to meddle in Israeli politics, but he actually feels justified in deciding where Jews can and cannot live in the Jewish homeland, and whether they can build an addition to their homes because they have the chutzpah to have children.
Indeed, twenty years mentored by Jew-hating Jeremiah Wright certainly gives weight to Obama's moral authority.
No wonder the brave Persian dissidents are turning to Israel for aid. They, like the mullahs, understand that Obama is a weakling, a reflexive appeaser.
Obama might think he's being pragmatic as he gives legitimacy to the murderous mullahs. He might fool himself into believing that by force of his magical charisma, he'll convince the mullahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions.
But, in fact, Obama is practicing positive reinforcement—for evil.
The mullahs are not Brian Williams, who literally bowed to Obama after a recent interview/love-fest. The mullahs are not the NY Times, the LA Times, Newsweek, or Time magazine, media that are nothing more than an extension of Obama's powerful PR machine.
The mullah are brutal Islamic theocrats—they stone women to death, deny the Holocaust even as they plan another, hang homosexuals, slice off limbs as punishment for various crimes—and they have no intention of stepping back from their tyranny, from their nuclear program, or from their repeated promises to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
Fortunately, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli public understand the mullahs just perfectly. That's why Bibi was elected, to deal with the Persian nuclear threat, and by extension, Hizbullah's massively growing arsenal of long-range missiles in Lebanon.
Israel also understands that Obama is an enemy of the Jewish state, thus, once again, the Jewish people stand alone against a genocidal enemy.
Sigh.
What else is new?
But here's the good news: at least the geo-political situation is clear.
The Israel Air Force’s F-15 fleet is undergoing an upgrade, with systems that make it better equipped for complex long distance attack scenarios. The systems are being installed in both the F-15 and the F-15I -- a model of the F-15 that was developed by its U.S. manufacturer specifically for the IAF.
According to IDF journal BaMachaneh, the F-15I model is currently being fitted with two new systems — one called “Barad Pelada” (“Steel Hail”), and another named Lightning.
The Barad Pelada advanced weapons system has been operational in the IAF’s F-16s for almost four years, but had to be modified in order to fit the F-15.
Barad Pelada is an advanced Israeli armament that operates like a smart bomb. “The system is unique in that it is able to plan the bombing in an accurate way by identifying the target from above,” a knowledgeable source in the IAF explained. “After the identification, the system carries out guidance to the target and only then is impact made.”
Full story, here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:18 AM in Obama Watch | Comments (7)
June 28, 2009
2009 Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture
Ariel Chaim ZT'L flies like an angel, 1981.
The Sixth Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture is up and live.
The title of Rabbi Steven Pruzansky’s lecture is: Conformity in Jewish Life: Virtue, Vice or Affectation?
Is conformity a Torah ideal, and should we encourage it in our children and communities ? Or does conformity restrict our creative impulses, diminish our simchat hachaim—joy of life—and potentially impair our service of Hashem ? Is there a value in pretending to conform externally ? This lecture will explore the Torah's balance between conformity and individuality.
To view the video of the lecture, or just listen to the audio, go to the sidebar, right below Ariel's picture and click the appropriate link.
Also: Hot and Humid Haveil Havalim at Simply Jews.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:03 AM in Remembering Ariel | Comments (16)
June 26, 2009
Top Secret Tool: Offspring #2's Wedding Footwear
To be opened after Offspring #3's August wedding.
“Oooo, I just can't wait for my new shoes to arrive,” says Offspring #2.
Karen and I are spending Shabbat in Teaneck. We're about to sit down for our Friday night Shabbat dinner—Karen and Offspring #2 darted about the kitchen as if in a Offenbach opera—when Offspring #2 sighs loudly, yearning for the shoes she ordered less than 24 hours ago, the shoes born for her sister's upcoming wedding.
“They'll probably arrive Monday or Tuesday,” I offer.
Offspring #2 looks all tragic and suffering, like Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette.
“Oh, but I want them now.”
“'ll bet you're more excited about your new shoes than the gown you're having made, right?”
“Definitely.”
My wonderful son-in-law shakes his head as he pours wine into the Kiddush cup: “I just don't get this thing women have for shoes.”
“Until you get women and their passion for footwear, you will never understand women.” I'm a regular Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Offspring #2 gets into details of the Badgley/Mischka shoes: “They're soooo cute and strappy, perfect wedding shoes with tulle on top.”
My son-in-law perks up. “Tool, you mean like a wrench?”
Karen goes: “Tulle is a fabric, like the wedding veil.”
My son-in-law looks disappointed. He really likes the idea of a wrench or a screwdriver as a shoe ornament.
We stand as he chants the Kiddush. I look at Karen, Offspring #2, and Ma'ayan Ariel, all bathed in the glow of Shabbat candles, and I experience happiness. There is no joy like being a husband, a father and a grandfather.
Meanwhile, Ruti E. writes: “At the last minute, the feet got camera shy. But I HAD to share the fulfilled quest. How many other people would care?”
Yes, Ruti, we care.
Our Israeli cyberfriend—check out the great photos on her blog—finally tracked down much desired turquoise flats and gee, what a relief, we're allowed to show them.
From the Irony File: Iranian dissidents are turning to Israel for assistance in opening up lines of communication with the outside world. They are not appealing to Barack Hussein Obama for he is clearly a weakling. It looks like Israel has inherited the mantle of Leader of the Free World. H/T Wolf Howling.
Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a miracle in Shabbat.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:57 AM in Friday Footwear | Comments (15)
June 25, 2009
Troopathon 2009: My Chaplain
To read my contribution to the Big Hollywood Troopathon, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 02:17 PM in Military | Comments (4)
If At First You Don't Succeed Grovel, Grovel Again
Iran's supreme butcher Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ridicules pen pal Obama.
This is definitely from the Neville Chamberlain school of international relations.
Prior to the current uprising in the streets of Iran, Barack Hussein Obama sent a letter to the mullahs begging them to, y'know, like us, to really like us.
Naturally, Khamenei ridiculed Obama's groveling note in a public sermon, recognizing Obama's abject tone and shameless display of weakness.
Obama, a man who has zero experience in international affairs, a man whose knowledge of geo-politics is limited to a narrow and, let's face it, radical leftist interpretation of world history—America is bad, Third World People are groovy, Israel/Jews are ruining everything. Thus, Obama is incapable of recognizing the existence of evil, much less confronting it. Obama's default is: apologize, crawl on your knees to dictators, insult your democratic allies, and claim that all cultures are equal.
The mullahs have a somewhat different frame of reference and it was articulated quite clearly by the Ayatollah Khomeini, as reported in Amir Taheri's Holy Terror, 1987.
Islam makes it incumbent on all adult males... to prepare themselves for the conquest of other countries so that the writ of Islam is obeyed in every country of the world. Those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world... Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. They are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean the Muslims should sit back until they are devoured? Islam says: Kill them, put them to the sword and scatter their armies...Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword. People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only to the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of scriptures urging Muslims to value war and fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.
Obama's naivete is not just breathtaking, but a veritable gift to the murderous mullahs of Persia, and to totalitarians everywhere.
Today, Big Hollywood is proud to participate in the 2nd annual Troopathon with content dedicated solely to the military and their families. Make sure to check out Big Hollywood's Troopathon.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:41 AM in Iran | Comments (2)
June 24, 2009
The Savages are Loose, Obama Waits to See How it Plays Out
“You should stop this... you should help the people of Iran who demand freedom... You should help us...”
Nah.
Barack Hussein Obama would rather sit down and chat with mass murderering mullahs because, y'know, he's just so darned smart and charming that his Jedi force field will convince them to give up their nuclear program, abandon their plans to annihilate Israel, cease oppressing women, renounce the hanging homosexuals, and sing kumbaya.
Security forces wielding clubs and firing weapons beat back demonstrators who flocked to a Tehran square Wednesday to continue protests, with one witness saying security forces beat people like "animals."
At least two sources described wild and violent conditions at a part of Tehran where protesters had planned to demonstrate.
"They were waiting for us," one source said. "They all have guns and riot uniforms. It was like a mouse trap.
"I see many people with broken arms, legs, heads — blood everywhere — pepper gas like war," the source said.
Another witness said hundreds of people were chased by security forces and clubbed about a mile from the square.
Yet another source, a man who spoke to his wife in the area of the square, recounted what she told him in a phone conversation.
He said she saw security forces shooting and beating people and saw blood on people's clothes and in the streets. The woman said security forces had been carrying butcher knives and batons.
Full story here.
But fear not, Barack Hussein Obama is “waiting to see how it plays itself out.”
Odd, I always believed that America leads the world in the cause of freedom.
Guess not.
Hope and Change for Islamic terrorists, but for a people struggling to loosen the shackles of tyranny, tepid rhetoric.
Reprehensible.
More excellent coverage of the Persian repression from my friend Wolf Howling
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 04:43 PM in Iran | Comments (14)
Obama's Push for a Judenrein Jerusalem
If I Forget Thee O' Jerusalem, Let My Right Hand Wither.
Photo by Robert J. Avrech, all rights reserved.
Let's review:
Barack Hussein Obama's mentor for over 20-years was the Jew-hating Jeremiah Wright. Obama was a faithful member of Wright's, so-called church, where Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan was lionized. Obama was buddy-buddy with American terrorists/trust fund babies Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, members of the murderous Weather Underground, and authors of Prairie Fire, a Communist manifesto dedicated to, among others, Sirhan Sirhan, the man who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy because of RFK's support of Israel. Also BFF with Obama is Rashid Khalidi, a Jew-hating—duh—Palestinian radical.
To paraphrase Claude Rains in Casablanca: “I'm shocked, shocked to find that Barack Hussein Obama is seeking a confrontation with The Jewish State and getting all misty-eyed over the Jew-hating Arab states.”
Item: Obama just reinstated full diplomatic relations with Syria. This is one of the most repressive regimes on the planet, a state that, in partnership with North Korea, secretly tried to build a nuclear facility, a state that sponsors terrorist groups Hamas and Hizbullah, a regime that assassinates its opponents in Lebanon, a thugogracy that just officially recognized the legitimacy of the Iranian elections.
There is no question that Barack Hussein Obama is putting the big freeze on Israel.
As for so-called Arab East Jerusalem, well, it's not.
Jews have lived in East Jerusalem since time immemorial, but the Jewish population was expelled, ethnically cleansed by Muslims beginning with the Arab pogroms of 1920.
Here's a rule you can live by: When Arab Muslims claim a piece of real estate, the first order of business is to expel the Jews. Look at Gaza. Thus there are 22 Arab Muslim countries and they are—except for Morocco's remnant of 2,000 Jews—Judenrein.
Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem are included in the US demand that Israel halt "settlement" construction, including for natural growth, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told The Jerusalem Post during a press briefing on Monday.
"We're talking about all settlement activity, yes, in the area across the line," he said, referring to neighborhoods in Jerusalem over the Green Line, or pre-1967 armistice line, in response to a question on where America's calls to halt construction in the settlements would be applied.
Full story, here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:43 AM in Jerusalem | Comments (4)
