Tuesday, March 14, 2023, Delray Beach, Florida


Notes From My Journal

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My Oscar Predictions: How Did I Do?

Plus: My Take on Some Categories You’ve Never Heard Of

I know you are dying to hear my thoughts on the Oscars and to find out, if you don’t know already, how my predictions panned out. So, here you go…

Best Movie: Yes, I said Everything Everywhere would take home the Oscar. A no-brainer (even though it really should not have won).

Best Director: I was right. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert won for Everything Everywhere. Alas, one of the greatest directors of our time (Spielberg) lost to them.

Best Cinematography: I knew James Friend would win because he did such amazing work on All Quiet. I would have preferred Frank van den Eeden, because of the riveting depth he gave to Close. But he wasn’t even nominated.

Best Actor: This Oscar should have gone to Bill Nighy in Living or Paul Mescal in Aftersun. (Although Austin Butler was pretty good, too, as Elvis.) But, as I predicted, it went, of course, to Brendan Fraser.

Best Actress: Michelle Yeoh was, along with everyone else in Everything Everywhere, the odds-on favorite. And she won. Ho hum. She wasn’t bad. But Cate Blanchett and Andrea Riseborough were better. (I liked Yeoh’s comment in her acceptance speech: “Ladies, never let anyone tell you that you are past your prime.”)

Best Supporting Actor: I said that Ke Huy Quan would win, and he did. But not because of his performance. It was because the Academy wants a sweep and is nostalgic for a comeback story. My pick would have been Brendan Gleeson. Actually, I think Barry Keoghan was even better.

Best Supporting Actress: All of the nominees were very good. (It was the best group in this category that I can remember.) I correctly said the Oscar would go to Jamie Lee Curtis, even though I would have given it to Kerry Condon.

Best Original Screenplay: I predicted The Banshees, though I would have preferred Triangle of Sadness. But the Oscar went to Everything Everywhere. How I got that wrong, I can’t explain. I guess I thought they had to give Banshees something.

Best Adapted Screenplay: I correctly predicted that All Quiet (which should have won) would be beat out by Women Talking, because Hollywood believes that sort of script deserves to win something.

Best Animated Feature: I was right again. The Oscar went to Pinocchio. A worthy choice, although I think Puss in Bootswas equal to it.

Best Documentary Feature: This one was easy. Navalny was destined to win. It was very good. But I thought All the Beauty and the Bloodshed was a tad better.

Best International Feature: Another easy call. Because All Quiet was also nominated for Best Picture, there was no chance that a better film, Argentina, 1986, would get more votes in this lesser category.

My Score: 11 out of 12 

Bonus Categories 

Most Common Adjective of the Night: Beautiful

 Second Most Common Adjective: Incredible

Best Mindless Moment: Lady Gaga explaining why her track for Top Gun (“Hold My Hand”) is important and more meaningful than the mediocre lyrics suggest.

Best Sentence in an Acceptance Speech: From Ruth E. Carter (who won Best Costume Design), referring to the passing of her mother, at 101, as “becoming an ancestor.”

Best German Moment: Edward Berger’s thank-you speech for All Quiet. (If you don’t get it, you don’t know the Germans.)

Another Great Thank-You Moment: Matthew Freud, accepting (with Charlie Mackesy), the award for Best Animated Short: “I know the protocol is to say thank you a lot, but I’m British, so instead I’ll say sorry.”

Lamest Speech: Bill Cramer, representing the Academy, talking about the awards that nobody is interested in.

Weirdest Commercial: Snapchat. What was that about?

Most Inclusive Commercial: Applebee’s. (And why not?)

Best Back-Walking Moments: The commercials about COVID (how it’s actually dangerous only for fat people) sponsored by Pfizer.

Most Narcissistic Statement: “Thank you so much to everyone who has unlocked my genius.” (Daniel Kwan in his acceptance speech for Best Director)

Most Pretentious Moment: There were too many to fairly choose from.

 

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From My Work-in-Progress Basket

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Am I Becoming a Conservative? You Tell Me!

Part I: Let’s Look at My Rap Sheet 

Some friends and family members that read this blog tell me I’m becoming noticeably more conservative. I don’t mind the label. In fact, I like to think that I am properly conservative when common sense and caution are at play.

(Who was it that said: “If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart. But if you are not a conservative when you are older, you have no brain.”)

But I also know that my political sentiments, social instincts, and moral beliefs haven’t changed since my younger days. So, why is it that others see me as moving towards conservatism?

One possibility is that I’m now addressing issues I’ve never written about before. And the ideas and opinions I’m proposing are more conservative than those I’ve expressed about other topics.

For example, I’ve written a lot about charity over the years. (Including a book titled The Challenge of Charity that I’ve been trying to finish). And my view of charity is that it is a moral duty. Equally as important as the moral duty to provide for the welfare of oneself and one’s family.

I’ve also written a lot about affirmative action. I believe it is not only a good idea and a moral duty – both in education and employment – but also a social necessity if we want to improve the quality of life in the US for our children and grandchildren.

Perhaps people have been filing those ideas into the liberal folder.

Or perhaps they have read my thoughts on the US criminal justice system. I believe it is broken. That we have too many people in jail, including many that never committed the crimes they were convicted of.

Perhaps the people that think I’m becoming more conservative think that I’ve abandoned those views.

I haven’t. I’ve had those views for as long as I can remember.

I also believe that…

* Women should get equal pay for equal work.

* Homosexual couples should have marital and estate planning rights.

* Black lives matter.

* Young Black men are more likely to be profiled as criminal suspects than young White men.

* Black children in the US have the odds of success greatly stacked against them.

The point of all this is not to put a label on my thinking. I have ideas and opinions that, from a distance, could be categorized as liberal, just as I have some that, from a distance, could be categorized as conservative.

The labels are the problem. They convey nothing that is complex.

I’m going to write a series of short essays on political, social, and economic topics that have become hot potatoes in recent years. I’m going to begin each one by expressing an opinion I have that might surprise my liberal-leaning friends. Then I’m going to go a little deeper.

On Friday, I’ll start by tackling the question of illegal immigration into the US. This has been a huge, hot issue ever since Trump announced that he was running for president in 2016.

As I’ll explain, I believe that immigration is good for the US and we need more of it. I believe more immigration will help America stay rich, both economically and culturally.

I also believe that our current immigration policy and protocols threaten to destroy us.

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News & Views

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College Students Are Turning Away From the Humanities.

Is That a Problem for the Next Generation?

SL and I are on the board of a task force at a local university. The goal is to boost enrollment in courses offered by the English Department.

We were asked to help because we are incredibly good looking… and because we know a little bit about English and American literature… but mostly because we have spent our careers in sales and marketing.

The challenge: In the last ten years, enrollment in English and other Humanities has been down considerably. And it’s not just a local thing. It’s a problem throughout the US.

As a student of literature, art, and philosophy, I’ve long touted the benefits of a Liberal Arts-centered education. My argument is that whatever career a young person might end up following, there are three skills that most determine success: thinking analytically, writing coherently, and speaking persuasively.

I believe that to be true regardless of whether one ends up working as a teacher, an artist, an engineer, a lawyer, or a doctor. The rise to the top is a labyrinth of gaining respect and power by thinking well, writing clearly, and speaking convincingly.

Unfortunately, too few young people have been exposed to my argument. They see courses in literature, arts, and philosophy as useful only for teaching literature, arts, and philosophy. They have little interest in spending the rest of their lives earning an ordinary income. They want a life that is, in some way, more exciting. I’m sympathetic to them in that regard. But they are wrong in assuming that they will do better generally, and make more money, if they study the STEM curricula. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)

SL and I each have our own ideas about how to fix the problem. He suggested that we start by revising the school’s brochures to make the Humanities courses sound more interesting. I agree with that. Plus, I’d like to launch a campus-wide, multi-media advertising campaign promoting my thesis that a major in Liberal Arts is the very best way to get to the top of any business or organization. (I think I know how to sell that idea. And I think it should be fun to try.)

Meanwhile, here’s a link to a New Yorker essay by Nathan Heller titled “The End of the English Major.” Heller makes it crystal-clear that the problem we are facing here in South Florida is not a regional issue.

 

Petty Crime Is Causing Serious Capital Flight in Big, Blue Cities 

Large retail stores are shutting down in big cities across the US. The reason? Nobody wants to talk about it. It’s because of a massive spike in shoplifting.

The latest example: Walmart is closing its Portland, OR, stores, leaving hundreds out of work and thousands in Portland’s marginal communities without a local place to shop cheaply. When asked why they closed the stores, Walmart’s PR department gave vague answers. Understandably, they don’t want to be portrayed as running away from “underserved” communities.

Click here.

 

More on the Fentanyl Epidemic 

On the morning of July 25, 2020, Matthew Thomas took what he believed was a Percocet, a prescription drug for pain relief. He died moments later, the victim of fentanyl poisoning.

On Jan. 26, 2019, Austen Babcock took what he believed was cocaine. Unbeknownst to him, it was laced with fentanyl. He died shortly thereafter, another victim of fentanyl poisoning.

What I’ve been learning about the fentanyl epidemic since I wrote about it on March 3, [LINK] is pretty scary. Many, if not most, deaths caused by fentanyl are not due to overdosing on fentanyl per se, but to what appears be other drugs that are laced with unbelievably lethal doses of it.

If you’d like to know more, this report from Katie Spence, writing for The Epoch Times, makes it clear how ubiquitous the drug is and how easy it is for unsuspecting young people to be poisoned by it.

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Worth Reading

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An Amazing Story of Endurance and Survival 

In 1971, Douglas Robertson and his wife sold their farm in England, bought a schooner, and set out to sail around the world with their four children.

After more than a year at sea, as they were rounding the tip of South America to begin their Pacific crossing, killer whales attacked their schooner and sunk it in less than a minute. The six Robertsons piled into a nine-foot inflatable life raft and embarked on an incredible story of survival.

If you are in the mood for a chilling adventure, you can read the whole story here.

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Postscript

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The Irony Is Almost Too Much to Believe 

Angela Davis, who was an important Black Power leader when I was in college (and is still active promoting reparations), has just discovered a startling secret about herself. Click here.

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