Welcome to another week of madness we call life–hope the weekend was good to you….Had a great weekend…..visited

Spring Hammock Preserve

We walked some paths and enjoyed the great day Saturday was in Central Florida.

“Do I look like I give a damn?”
James Bond (Daniel Craig) after being asked if he would like his vodka martini shaken or stirred, Casino Royale (2006)

Liquor Bottle FISHER & FAIRBANKS Tall Antique from Bost… (262271347935) $6.20

Latest on next OUTLANDER season Which starts in 39 days:

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/39-outlander-39-season-2-what-we-know-1373752888188982.html

AND Sam Heughan on Jamie Fraser’s struggle: http://www.fashionnstyle.com/articles/81014/20160224/outlander-season-2-spoilers-sam-heughan-teases-jamie-fraser-struggle-ptsd.htm

was there ever a show with more hot men?

PRECIOUS MOMENTS Cup for “Pam” (262271397084) $3.99

While I was getting ready to write this Jaws came on—Haven’t seen it in ages, kinda like not that again, but I let it stay on the channel and now I remember why this show was such a hit and why we were hesitant to return to the water for long after the movie had moved from our consciousness to join our inherited and cultural taboos…hidden away in the back of our minds like a bad experience….to always (for some of us) taint our ocean dives and sojourns. In societies like ours there are few family legends that hold in our mind….each generation become less connected with their past and more afloat in a hodgepodge of video games, super heroes and movies that seem to replace the taboos and legends of our cultural reality. So I look at Jaws as one of those movies that plays on our cultural fears that are part of our human past—even though for most of us it has been many generations since as a society or people, have had to fight the creatures for our existence, there is still the tribe of mankind’s collective memory and Jaws plays to that deep seated shared fear of deep waters and things that go bump in the night.

“ET phone home.”
Gertie/Drew Barrymore in ET the Extra-terrestrial (1982)

While still a cult classic I see this movie as one of the early horror stories that set us up for all the vampires good and bad since. When Bram Stoker wrote his book about an undead Count from a decaying castle in Transylvania who comes to England to reek havoc on the unsuspecting inhabitants of a port city (he wrote and the city he set it all in was Whitby which is on the East coast over the York plains several miles from York and where we’re planning on visiting on my summer adventure),

Though the legends grow more outrageous and convoluted—from Barnabas Collins, the soap opera vampire (Dark Shadows) in the 60’s to the crazy legends and histories of Underworld’s legions of vampires and werewolves it is this movie (and it’s birthparent book) Dracula (with the bizarre Bela Lugosi) that brought it all prominence and rebirthed and kept live and contributed to our own pre-occupations with these darkness dwelling creatures that have gone from base evil to more currently everything from unjustly cursed beings and lovers to almost god-like evil incarnate creatures that drink our blood and doom us to a life of night dwelling blood drinking as well.

Vampire creatures have long been a staple in the dark stories and legend of most cultures and with these new books and movies everywhere we assure these legends that rather than dying out they become more potent and engraved in our society, which like the shark before appeals to our dark corners and scary, non-scientific places of our mind and spiritual being.

“Ever since I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster. To me that was better than being president of the United States. To be a gangster was to own the world.”
Henry Hill/Ray Liotta in Goodfellas (1990)

And now a big buck epic where we view the Russian Revolution and the love of one man, a doctor, for two women while the world he know is destroyed about him.

This movie gives us grand scope and yet brings us down from the huge revolution to the man—someone who is part of the hated society that the Communists wish to destroy and yet we see a lot of us in that man and a lot more good in him than in the revolution which is tearing apart a culture which while suppressive to those not in the ruling or at least the wealthy classes, is still a society that seems to us westerns to be the lesser of two evils.

Whether this confirms many in our own society’s fear of Communism or as is the case with many of us just a beautiful, love story set amid death and destruction it leaves a mark on our mind and a remembrance in our heart and makes some of us thankful that our own revolution did not take place at such destruction to our or our mother country’s society.

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”
Rhett Butler/Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind (1939)

THE GODFATHER MOVIES: AN ode to an American Institution, or how we learned to love the mob in three easy lessons—or rather two the #3 movie seriously sucked, but that’s my opinion—

These series of movies (and the ones that came after like Goodfellas–both movies by the way having inspired no end to pizza joints named for them) has placed the Mafia in our national consciousness and made them part of the American heritage for better or worse. They have despite the violence of the movies and the obvious responsibilities of the main characters (Mainly Vito, Sonny and Michael Corleone) for this violence, become part of our icons for modern society and by doing so in some ways it would seem we have accepted the violence that the MOB has done, while maybe not being an actual forgiveness of same, as at least an understandable part of our ongoing necessity for certain parts of our society—kind of like how we took the Indian ‘s lands and now make movies (well did, these have kinda gone out of style) about our brave men and the wicked savages.

The Godfather is one of our early Anti-hero examples which seem to become more and more inclusive in our society till sometimes I believe that the Anti-hero has become the norm and the heroes of old are outdated and unacceptable to our modern and increasingly less interested in morals and obligation-owed society.

“Go ahead, make my day.”
Harry Callaghan/Clint Eastwood in Sudden Impact (1983)