54

Starring Ryan Phillippe and Salma Hayek with Mike Myers and Neve Campbell

1998

'54' captures the epitomy of post rebellion baby boomer generation excesses - and business practices, a story unique to its time. Historians will certainly have a heyday analyzing the brief popularity of disco at its particular point in time, and this movie provides clues to what was really going on.

The movie chronicles the experience of a young, lower middle class, 'jerysey boy' who climbs to the heights of Manhattan's social world in a haze of sex and cocaine, by working at the club.

I'm not a fan of Mike Myers typical products, but here he is superb as the club owner, Steve Rabbell.

FWIW, let's hope the Obama generation never generates such tales....

This isn't a clip from the movie, but a slide show from the actual club, set to a medly of disco music. I wonder if Bernie Madoff is in one of these pictures....?

In order to preserve business profitability many more jobs will be lost.

TARP and Stimulus funding will be used to support those in the 'echo chamber' of Washington D.C. and the executive board rooms of Corporate America, but nothing will be used to help you out.

Jobs will be outsourced overseas, if not filled with illegal immigrants, in a continuing desperate effort to support the excesses of the oligarchical lifestyle.

A few government jobs will be created. The primary responsibility of these 'public servants' will be to tell you how much of a loser you are and how it's time to be responsible for their failings. Most of the time these folks will be very professional and polite in how they do it, but you do run the risk of getting shot if you dare to stand up for yourself.

Though the Enron corporate scandal foretold these problems we have not learned our lessons yet - in fact our leadership is flagrantly flaunting their power.

Ron Sims is no Jefferson Smith, the lead character from the 1939 Capra movie, 'Mr. Smith goes to Washington'. Sims may well be the administrative/stimulus official to make sure that Obama does not repeat the mistakes of boomer era executives, for example, Norm Rice.

Sims is a real human being, and a pragmatic one, making, what he believes, are honest decisions about weighing practicality with ideals. How he handles his new authority to further advance the idealistic in King County, at this moment in time, will show whether he has succumbed to the temptations and corruption of power or will rise to the constitutional responsibilities of his federal position.

Salvador Mungia is the President-elect of the Washington State Bar Association and he has weighed in on a local legal controversy in a manner that raises my hopes for the resolution of widespread corruption in the Seattle/King County Bar.

You work for your corrupt lawyer, not he, or she, for you.

Sure, you benefit, but only by agreeing to be a party to the corruption.

And you'd better darn well believe that the Republican Tarp and the Obama Stimulus is only going to benefit the corrupt. Obama is only president because the Chicago Bar has certified that he is someone who can be manipulated through standard PC 'Best Management Practices'.

It's a tough question, are you going to own up to your failures or are you going to sell your soul to the devil in order to NOT be a responsible adult?

Are you a businessperdon who isn't fit to be an assistant manager at a fast food joint? Are you a public servant whose ideas are nothing but a white sheet for your acts of hate against the American public?

Consider the case of Enron. Did any of those lawyers get held accountable? Not a one, and it should've been a lifetime disbarrment for senior counsel as well as jail.

Did we fix the problem? Damn well we didn't, we only repeated the same type of complicated scam throughout corporate and financial America.

And we may well be going to hell for our sins, if we don't send those responsible there damn quick.

Charles Mudede, from the Seattle Stranger, went to the University District to check out what folks who were actually aquainted with her thought.

The picture is a bit different from the sweet little daddy's girl stuff put out by the Seattle media and her family. - and, not surprisingly, consistent with the Italian evidence. I'm not saying she's guilty of murder, but she's darn well guilty of something.

I will also postulate, for your consideration, that Ms. Knox's behavior is the result of school and workplace practices which have basically reinvented the cycle of abuse as a best management practice. There are specific legal ways this was done, one of them was a legal standard that accounts holding a woman accountable for her actions as legally actionable harrassment.

This attitude spoiled Ms Kircher, thinking she could do whatever she wanted. Now, most folks are not going to end up in her situation, but that does not justify the practice.

Worse is the fact that these abusive school and workplace practices aren't the result of a sorry individual, they are a rationally constructed tool of corruption by the King County Bar to control and extort from government and corporations.

Isn't that right, Daddy?

I won't come down either way with Kerlikowske, I was pretty much leaving the City as he was coming on board. However, the reasons I left are germane to a measurement of the man and I do have strong concerns, especially considering the history of abuse associated with our local DC 'lobbyists'.

Like Ron Sims, Kerlikowske has also successfully negotiated the minefield of Seattle gender politics. The question though is, at what cost?

A quick suggestion for Greg Nickels - hire Norm Stamper as your interim Seattle Police Chief!

No way in the world does Stamper deserve even the slightest hint of stigma for what happened during the WTO riots. Protest is a right in this society and accomdating it in exactly the manner he, and Mayor Paul Schell, did was perfect.

The problem at the WTO protests was the failure of a multi-force security team to immediately address the troublemakers - deliberately allowing the situation to get out of hand so all participants could be smeared.

We should be ashamed that we allowed Seattle politics to be so easily manipulated by these 'WTO Types' - the same sorts of no-accounts who are responsible for Enron type problems and their current manifestation.

The Big Tease

Starring Craig Ferguson

1999

For Valentines day, a comedy - not romantic, exactly but close enough. This movie isn't high art either, but, if you will picture William Wallace reincarnated as a gay hairdresser come from Scotland to Los Angeles to conquer, you have the gist.

Ferguson, now a late-night talk show host, makes the movie.

Today is the day traditional broadcast TV was supposed to end. Commenting on what was the finest broadcast civic programs, Meet the Press, since the sudden death of long time host Tim Russert seems salient.

Sure, MSNBC still has some thought provoking coverage, but it's not part of the strictly 'public' sphere, it;s paid cable. David Gregroy is just not up to the job - more glib and self-satisfied than Mark Lauer on what was once the best, politically practical, critical program in this country.

Is this the corporate future that Welch, married to a mergers and aquisitions attorney for most of his tenure as president, has in mind for us?

He should be ashamed. MTP was a quality organization and you couldn't keep up a tradition of independent journalism? I guess you, and yours, know best. Or at least you think you do.

I for one disagree. The running of our nation is everybody's business and it is the responsibility of the Press to insure we are all involved, and educated. You and your fellow NYC primadonna punks and your DC lobbyists either need to pay off the deficit and then leave.

You may well think you are better than everyone else, but all you have done is make yourself into no account gutter trash.

BTW, first hit on Google about 'Meet the Press' whose URL doesn't start with msn also doesn't like Gregory, but for different reasons.

Your City's baby boomer power couple's marriage is based not on love, but power. This is power based on hate that advances itself by putting others down, it is a marriage made not in love and heaven but in hell for profit at the expense of others.

Local couples include Judy and Jon Runstad, Barbara Linde and Greg Canova, and perhaps Mayor Nickels and his wife, though I'm not sure about that one.

Brazil

Directed by Terry Gilliam

Starring Jonathan Pryce and Robert Deniro, with Ian Holm and Bob Hoskins

1985

This is a movie about love in a modern (post?) bureaucracy. It is a masterwork, one of the best movies of the century. Nothing else need be said, save that there is an alternative ending available on one of the collector's editions.

This clip is a montage of movie scenes set to the Sinatra song of the same name.