And by the way, please don’t take bets on how “clever and resilient” I am. I’ve known quite a few Vietnamese, and really, they aren’t the magic genies you make them out to be. You don’t really know me so I dare say you’ve no right to make such silly billy statements. Cheers.
“And by the way, please don’t take bets on how “clever and resilient” I am. I’ve known quite a few Vietnamese, and really, they aren’t the magic genies you make them out to be. You don’t really know me so I dare say you’ve no right to make such silly billy statements. Cheers.”
You are the king of hypocrites.
I first heard of this from, of all people, Roger Ebert.
Philip Larkin – This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
MARK AND ROBLEY (you appear to be one-and-the-same):
As I believe I made clear, I will not involve myself in political discussions on The Auteurs.
That is mis-use of the site, in my view.
I have made my position very clear.
Good Wishes
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
I know, Robley.
No I mean I didn’t read any of yours and Mark’s debate. And I wasn’t trying to partake in your debate.
Robley-
Understood.
In quoting Ho, I wasn’t trying to launch a political debate. Those always come to nil and ill, don’t you think?
Nor do I think this is the best place to discuss contentious political issues.
My political sympathies aside, I think Ho was a remarkable figure.
Albest,
GA
Mark-
I bow to your expertise, and I envy your extensive Vietnamese experience. I can hardly challenge your insights, nor do I doubt their accuracy.
To paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s remark to “Curly” in Chinatown: “You’re right. When you’re right, you’re right.”
The Vietnamese have a made a few good films, by the way – you may have seen them. A couple of them starred the beauty who appeared in “The Ugly American.” I bookmarked the scene in which she wiggles around in front of a mirror to Sydney Bechet’s “La Petite Fleur.”
As I suggested to Robley, I think Ho was a remarkable figure, whatever your sentiments. I’m an ascetic, like Ho. And, yes, I’m a radical leftist, as well. (“Radical Lefists” aren’’t Communists, by the way.)
Ho would tell you here: “I am humbly grateful for your enmity, Mark. It strengthens me immeasurably.”
When Ho was in Paris, he lived in a trashy hotel room. He slept on the floor rather than in the bed because, again, it strengthened him and taught him deprivation.
His friends rented a better room for him, in a better hotel, but still he slept on the floor, and told his friends, “I have done nothing in life yet to merit a bed and a pillow.”
He was a dish-washer in Boston for some years, you know.
You may not care to wade through Ambassador Duiker’s 800-page bio of Ho, but at least check him out on Wikipedia.
Ambassador Duiker admried Ho, and so, maybe, should you.
Cheers.
GA
BUMP This is relevant to my interests.
I can’t think of anything, which is odd because I find human beings thoroughly unpleasant.
Yeah, fuck you, too. Fuck me? Fuck you, Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it. Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car – get a fucking job! Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped-up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35. Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English? Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin’ and dealin’ and schemin’. Go back where you fucking came from! Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds! Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for FUCKING LIFE! You think Bush and Cheney didn’t know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Worldcom! Fuck the Puerto Ricans. Twenty to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin’ parade in the city. And don’t even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, ‘cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi Louisville Slugger baseball bats, trying to audition for “The Sopranos.” Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermès scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You’re not fooling anybody, sweetheart! Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don’t want to play defense, they take five steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the fuck on! Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus-violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child’s pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you’re at it, fuck J.C.! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin’ Otisville, J.! Fuck Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and backward-ass cave-dwelling fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your seventy-two whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel-headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass! Fuck Jacob Elinsky. Whining malcontent. Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend’s ass. Fuck Naturelle Riviera, I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back, sold me up the river, fucking bitch. Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar sipping on club sodas, selling whisky to firemen, and cheering the Bronx Bombers. Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row-houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park Slope to the split-levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place.
25th HOUR
did I win?
Watch it, bub.
Tom Cruise’s Vincent in Michael Mann’s Collateral has to absolutely fit the mold of posthuman misanthropy…though we find in his attempts to control Max with his mindset, it ultimately backfires on him.
And with Mann’s first feature film Thief we have perhaps an even more startling misanthropy from Leo (Robert Prosky) in response to Frank (James Caan) not wanting to be used any further for his scores; scene starts at 34 second mark…
“I feel the top of the roof come off, kill everybody there as I’m watching all the stars burn out, trying to pretend that I care.
But I didn’t, no-one ever does, and I would, no-one ever will
Can’t you see it’s all flown out of my hands and our clothes are all too often ripped and our teeth are all too often gnashed and it lasts as long as it possibly can but I just don’t accept this.
I just don’t accept this at all.
Faces sweaty, arms and legs, what a glorious set of stairs we make.
We kill everyone with arrowheads, arrowheads, arrowheads. Thank god that’s over.
" from Have a Nice Life’s album ‘Deathconciousness’
I agree with Charles’ first example but Leo in Thief is not being misanthropic since his disdain is directed at one person in particular, not the whole of humanity.
MARK HAS 50 WORDS FOR SNOW
Gordon says:
“You may possibly recall that our nation was born in a revolution, and expelled foreign occupiers”
To paraphrase the Angry Stick-Up Man who confronts Harry Callahan in “Sudden Impact”…
“Who’s OUR, sucker?”
Because I know for DAMN sure you ain’t talking about MY country.
Typical American: thinks the whole world is America and just GUESSES the person on the other end of the computer is a seppo. I DID go to the trouble of filling in my “about me” section, you know.
I’d say your country (as mine) was more built on invading a so-called “no man’s land” and kicking the crap out of the natives…oops, but who am I to judge?
Gordon, you read a book and visited the country. Good for you. But you didn’t live for decades in Vietnam and before I even pick up your book (fat chance), I’d like to introduce you to my slightly nutty South Vietnamese ex-girlfriend. She might have had a few screws loose, but one thing she was educated about, and one thing you do NOT do to a South Vietnamese is wind them up about Ho Chi Minh.
She still has the old South Vietnamese flag sitting in her house, and I’d listen to her and her family before what you learned from reading a book.
The Americans and the French were no angels, but don’t try selling me on Ho Chi being some sort of humanitarian. Cults of personality
- religious, political, otherwise-are for fools. You are welcome to place flowers on H.C.M.‘s grave…I couldn’t help but snickering when I read it, though, I wasn’t sure whether to take you seriously. It reminds me of those people who wept around Mao’s corpse and Stalin’s carcass. You can go and visit Lenin’s perfectly preserved stuffing, for all I care and give him a bouquet of red poppies, if you like. I, for one, refuse to worship warmongers as heros, and I’ll save my flowers for relatives and friends and my reading time for something worthwhile, much like I’m certain you save your cinema time for things other than J-Lo vehicles.And THAT is maturity.