Open Thoughts: Two for Tuesday

How many format changes have they gone through since then, again?  Last time I was back in Jersey, I think they were playing teen pop or something...

Btw, I watched V For Vendetta for the first time yesterday.  Why'd I wait so long?!  Really enjoyed it.

"My turn."

Heh...

Magnificently memorable multiloquous monologue!

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

then i saw this movie:

& i went looking further....

"Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger,
how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man?"
~The Patrician in 'Snuff' by Terry Pratchett

And to make it a two-fer, the same group Umass Dynamics Perform Breakfast at Tiffany's a cappella;

But seriously this whole You Tube pages is great.

Necklace

Distraught and sad,
anxious and agitated,
her face uncovered, her head unveiled,
unmindful of arrest or policeman,
oblivious to the order, "Cover! Conceal!"
Her eyes, two grapes plucked from their cluster,
squeezed by the times to fill a hundred barrels with blood,
mad, really mad, a stranger to herself and others,
oblivious to the world, beyond being awakened even by the deluge,
a particle of dust adrift in the wind, without purpose or destination,
lost, speechless, bewildered, a corpse without a grave,
carrying around her neck a necklace of curses and tears,
a pair of boots tied together belonging to a dead soldier.

I asked her: What does this mean?
She smiled: It's my poor child's, he's sitting on my shoulders,
he has not taken off his boots yet.

For details and video, check this link.

And can anyone remember that this was originally sung by Ethel Merman?

Had I know the writer and director, a person who whenever a cynic says something like "there is nothing that is really original" I just say that person's name to put an end to such drivel, if I know who it still would have been a surprisingly great movie but not knowing made this story ten times better.  

I don't want to say that name, just in case someone reading this is as out of touch as myself but that particular writer is immediately recognized by the typography of the opening and closing credits, at the end of the movie when the credits rolled and I had just watched the entire movie saying to myself "This is like a new ... for a new generation," it turned out to be the same old ... for a new generation.

Really good movie, really pleasant accident. I should have my status as a New Yorker removed for not having seen it in the theater but I had such a great evening watching that film.

Oh and this young Rebecca Hall is going to do great things on both stage and screen.      

Be back in around ten hours.  

Five days after appearing before Congress to testify about its responsibility in one of the worst oil spills in US history, the Swiss company that owned and operated the oil rig that sunk into the Gulf of Mexico announced  that it would shell out $1 billion in dividends to shareholders.

The revelation that Transocean is distributing a $1 billion profit to shareholders as one of its drill sites leaks millions of gallons of oil into the sea is sure to inflame an already smarting debate over offshore drilling and the company's role.

Transocean has passionately argued that they don't share financial responsibility for the disaster. A clause in a contract they had with BP says that the oil company is obligated to pay for any environmental damage, even though Transocean actually owned the rig. BP was leasing the rig from Transocean at the time of the accident.

Transocean's distribution to shareholders was done quietly on Friday at a "closed door meeting." The company had previously announced that they would vote on the dividend at the event.

To put the distribution in perspective, the amount of profit that Transocean plans to pay out in the next year is half of what Exxon ultimately paid for the Exxon Valdez disaster off the Alaska Coast.