GOLDEN OLDIE2: Cinderella Man

                                     Not for the faint of heart

Okay, so maybe the reason I’m doing this “Golden Oldie” thing is that it takes far less energy to view a movie than to blunder through the seemingly endless biography of FDR that I have been contending with for at least month.  I admire any writer who has the self-control and persistence needed to produce a book running to tens of thousands (hell, maybe millions) of words.  About all I can manage are blog bits consisting of a few short paragraphs, and thus I find myself turning to my computer for respite  and relaxation.  But, anyway. . . .

Last night I watched the 2005 boxing movie Cinderella Man, starring Russell Crowe and Renee Zellwegger, with an award-winning performance by Paul Giamatti* in support.  The director was Ron Howard, of whom many good things are said.  I liked it a lot.  B+. 

However, if you are faint of heart or tender of sensibility you may this a hard flick to watch.  The first half takes place in a Jersey tenement during the worst of the Great Depression.  It truly it is hard to watch.  This half of the picture really belongs to Zellweger*; you can hardly avoid sharing her desperation and helplessness as her life dissolves around her.  As far as I can see she didn’t receive any awards or nominations for her efforts, which is a shame. Crowe is great here, too.  You share the humiliation of this proud man who, through no fault of his own finds himself unable to provide for his family.  It almost hurts to watch.

However, the second half of the movie is all boxing, with Crowe and Giamatti, lots of violence, and plenty of blood. It tells the (true) story of how light-heavyweight James J. Braddock fought his way up the ladder to take the title away from a truly nasty specimen, Max Baer.  (At least Baer is portrayed in the movie as nasty bastard; I didn’t know him personally.)

So, bottom line:  Most of you will enjoy this movie, and those of you who quit when the blood begins to flow will at least have learned a few things about the age your grandparents lived through.  Or great grandparents.

*Giamatti deserves his award; Zellweger deserves one.  And, by the way, Giamatti appears as co-star of a disgusting flick called Sideways, which I despise.  Don’t see it.  Ever

MY FIRST GOLDEN OLDIE

                                                 American Gangster

Well, what’s a codger to do?  I am pushing 90, hard, it is wet outside, my balance is shot to hell, I have given away my car – and, except for football – I hate daytime TV (yes, even the news).  Thus it seems that I must reconcile myself to lots of happy hours with my computer.  The problem then arises that often I have nothing in mind to write about, at least nothing most of the world would want to read.  Moreover, if I don’t watch out I may run out of pictures of Linda.  All that being the case I have decided to launch a new series, patterned on my “Taped Treasures from my Basement” offerings of a half-dozen  years ago.  Having no basement in my new dwelling place (The Willows), nor tapes or anything to play them on, I’m going to call this series something else, although I haven’t decided what.  (Maybe Pictures you Saw a Long Time Ago, but might enjoy Again.  Nah, too long and too clunky).  So, whatever, it will work like this:  If I feel inspired and have a splash of energy still in the tank, after dinner I will pour myself a shot of Bellewood Farm’s pumpkin liqueur and sip it while viewing an old movie on my iPad.  I will chose movies that I liked and that are old enough so that, even if you’ve seen them already, you might enjoy watching again.  And if you don’t get into them, what the hell -  there’s always Wheel of Fortune.

So anyway, my first offering is American Gangster, co-starring two of the best male movie actors of the last several decades – Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington.  (Did I spell those names correctly?  No matter, you know who I mean.)  Released in 2007, it made me grateful that I have been able to spend nearly all my life in places like Beaumont and Borrego Springs (and yes, Bellingham).  Supposedly based on a true story, but clearly Hollywood-ized to woo the Oscar voters, American Gangster was nominated for several Oscars and collected a few.  The director was the ever-reliable Ridley Scott.

I rate it a solid B+.

OVCA FIGHTS DIRTY!

                                                 LINDA AS A BAG LADY

                                                            Halloween

OVCA doesn’t fight fair!  This interesting little article details how ovarian cancer cells evade the immune system by pretending to be babies!  Fetuses, actually.

I guess I have never thought about the interaction of childbirth and the immune system.  Killer immune cells are vigilant, at all times waiting to destroy stuff that it regards as “non-self”.  When you think about it, a fetus growing inside a woman is non-self in spades!  Yet babies are born.  Clearly the body has evolved a mechanism that somehow tells the immune system “Hey, I’m non-self but harmless, so leave me be.”  Well. It seems that (somehow – way above my pay grade) OVCA cells have hijacked that trick.  Stanford researchers are hot on the trail of a way to counter this.  More power to ‘em!

Read this article; it’s good.  Actually, you can listen to it, too.

https://www.stanforddaily.com/2021/10/31/stanford-study-discovers-how-ovarian-tumors-avoid-detection-by-the-immune-system/  

 

ON THE SHAPE OF AN OCEANIC PLATEAU

 Well, drat!  I just spent an hour drafting a little essay on the expectable shape of oceanic plateaus/large igneous provinces.  Then I went to see how the Seahawks were doing (not so hot) and when I came back I somehow screwed up and lost the whole blinking thing!  I have a sister-in-law who is a computer whiz; she might have pulled my bacon out of the fire, but apparently she is out somewhere, enjoying life – so I will just summarize my thoughts and spit them out without any attempt at literary embellishment.  Here goes.

But first: remember that I have been out of the tectonics game for nearly twenty years, during which time great strides have been made (and many new conundrums discovered).  Anyway, don’t take my speculations to the bank

The question is: what is the shape of the typical oceanic plateau at the moment it docks?  Is it more or less circular (equi-dimensional, in the horizontal plane. equant)?  Or is it an elongate “gummy bear”, to use Nick Zentner’s flavorful terminology?  Well, here goes:

Large igneous provinces erupted on land seem to be roughly equant; think CPB, Deccan traps and others.  If LIP are the tops of pipe-like mantle plumes one would expect them to be roughly circular, everything else equal.  But if the plume, assumed to be stationary or nearly so, lies beneath a moving tectonic plate then the expectation is that they would be elongate in the direction of plate motion.  How much?  Well, that of course depends on both plate velocity and how long it took for the oceanic plateau to accumulate.  Assuming reasonable numbers – a velocity of five cm/Ma and an accumulation time of five Ma – an undistorted circle of 1000 km. diameter  would be transformed into a 5X4 ellipse; still substantially equi-dimensional.  To derive a worm-like shape would require an improbably rapid rate of plate motion, a very long eruption interval, and/or a very small LIP accumulation, and probably some (unlikely) combination of all three.  Voila:  our LIP probably arrived as roughly equi-dimensional cow pies, not as string beans

Hence, I continue to suspect that our Cordilleran terranes arrived as  blobs, and then then were sliced and diced to their present elongate appearance by action of a persistent dextral shear zone.

Pretty simplistic, yeah.  What have I overlooked?

 

HOW HAVE THE MIGHTY FALLEN!

 

Back a couple decades ago three other guys and I used to work out regularly in the WWU gym.  Although we were in our 60s we regularly benched 230, pressed 90, curled 75, and tossed 25 lb. dumbbells around like so many bags of feathers!   Although we never said so, we felt pretty darned buff; between workouts we jogged on the track for all the world to admire.

Well, times they have a way of changing.  Currently I am living in a retirement community, The Willows, which offers all sorts of classes and other amenities.  I enrolled in an upper-body strength class, which met earlier this week.  We work with dumbbells, the heaviest of which was 5 lb.  Naturally that’s what I grabbed.  Half way through her routine the instructor stopped, came over to me, took away my 5 lb set – and handed me 3s!  (Several of the women in the class still were using 5s!).

But I will persevere.

 

A WALKER JAM

                            THE VEHICLE OF CHOICE

Can you imagine a monumental traffic jam – consisting of four-wheeled walkers?  Well, neither could I until today – when they administered the Moderna booster shot to everyone at The Willows:  residents, staff and, for all I know, casual visitors and a few delivery boys!  Kind of reminded me of central Cairo on a Friday night.  (I’m kidding of course; it was crowded but orderly; hardly even frustrating.)  Anyway:  there are a heck of a lot of nimble old folks here, almost all of whom can easily out run me with their vehicles of choice even though I seem to be a relative youngster.  Clean living, I suppose.

So, anyway, now I am good to go.  Bring on that damned virus!

A BOOK REPORT

                                      Battle for Okinawa

I wish I were young again and had a lifetime of reading ahead of me.  Then I could enjoy a pristine encounter with William Manchester, who is far and away my favorite writer of what might be called popular (i.e., fun to read) history.  Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill, three volumes (although the third co-written) are simply marvelous.  Although Manchester calls himself a “knee-jerk FDR liberal”, and I regard myself as a (flexible) small-government conservative. I find nothing in WM’s writings to dislike.  If you haven’t discovered him yet – lucky you!

And, moreover, my sister-in-law was once his baby-sitter!

Anyway: a book tip.  Manchester was a Marine sergeant in the Pacific theater during WWII.  If you want to attempt to understand just  how horrible that war, in that theater was, read Goodbye, darkness.  In it Manchester revisits many of the places he fought in and for.  Powerful writing, if sometimes hard on the sensitivities.  Available from Abebooks for as little as $3.79. Go for it!