A Face In The Crowd

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050371/

I was dubious about this film but thought Elia Kazan directed it so it couldn't suck. All I knew of Griffiths was his sheriff character on The Andy Griffiths Show. You know the show about a town in Dixie that has no black people in it? In case you're wondering about that here's a map of race distribution in the U.S. I'm not offended in a politically correct way by this; it just bugs me for being untrue.

//** digression
There is a show on FX called, Justified. It's supposed to be set in rural Kentucky. There are constant references in the script to Kentucky. Kentucky is practically a character in the show and yet the show is filmed in southern or central California. The producers could have used B.C. or even northern California but no. The vegetation doesn't match. Live oaks and palm trees simply don't grow in KY. The mountains don't look right either.
**// end of digression

Griffiths gives a stupendous performance in this film. Really nailed the megalomania of his character, Lonesome Rhodes. Nailed the hillbilly drifter bit too.

This must be the earliest instance in film where someone inadvertently ends his career by forgetting the mic is always on.

Lenny Hearts Eunice, by Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart has a superb short story in this week's New Yorker (June 14 & 21) magazine called, "Lenny Hearts Eunice." It reminds me a bit of George Saunder's writing. Well, not in terms of style. They both do a great job at harpooning consumer and corporate culture.

This NYer issue is entitled, "20 Under 40" because all the authors published in this issue are under forty years old. The TOC lists only eight stories so I'm not sure what the 20 represents.

Lithia Springs

I used to live in a town in GA called Lithia Springs. Back then I never bothered to figure out how the town got it's name although I did ask some locals. Nobody knew. Lithia sounded vaguely Greek to me so I figured the founders named it after some ancient city.

Years later I discovered that there are several towns in the US named Lithia Springs; one is in Florida. There's a place in the Holyoke Mountain range in West-Central MA named Lithia Springs but it's not a town. It may actually be a spring. You can see it on google maps.

After some digging I found a web page regarding some religious sect that held retreats at a site somewhere in the Midwest which had a "lithia spring." Years ago "lithia" is how people referred to the element lithium, and somehow folks knew this metal was in the water issuing from the spring. Lithium was used to treat gout in the nineteenth century, at least according to wikipedia. Good to know.

OpenLDAP on Debian Lenny

Why the hell do we need to mess with /etc/defaults/slapd? Shouldn't files in /etc/default be left alone, and if need be overridden elsewhere as with the BSDs? Isn't configuring LDAP with StartTLS complex enough without spreading the config across three files? There's already ldap.conf and slapd.conf. I guess I still prefer the BSD style after all these years doing Linux.

The MBTA and why I need to avoid using it.

When I arrived at the Alewife T station yesterday there was a lunatic at the turnstiles yelling at the MBTA pseudocop about how he had just been released "from Walpole" and that he was going to get on the train "one way or another." He was refering to Walpole State Prison aka "MCI-Cedar Junction" for you non-Massachusetts people. It's a maximum security state prison. Apparently he had no money.
I hurried past him and got on the train. Two minutes later the same guy is sitting a few seats down from me on the train; I guess the pussy MBTA cop let him pass so he would become someone else's problem. I immediately got up and moved myself to another car. Thankfully he stayed put.
On the return trip we were treated to the African American acrobat who performs standing back flips inside the moving train. Why can't the T ban this very obviously dangerous guy? He's busking inside the train and I fear he'll accidentally rearrange someone's face with his foot. But the Red Line liberals seem to love him. They clap convincingly while tossing coins into his hat, despite having seen him do his trick a dozen times before. Can't he belt out some shitty rap instead? He could call himself Brother Blue II.

Usually the Red Line has a technical problem with the tracks or train or someone has a epileptic fit which causes a well-meaning bystander to pull the emergency lever, as if stopping the train between stations would help the victim get to a hospital faster. Shit like that happens every damn goddamn day on the Red Line, especially when I'm riding it ;)

I'm a hacker and Windows 7 was my idea.

The above was seen posted on slashdot. And in the same thread I saw the link,

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/06/using-windows-for-a-day-cost-mac-user-100000/

Just one small incident in a vast sea of Microsoft misery.

The Wolfman movie. Get out the pooper-scooper.

I hope Anthony Hopkins and Benny Del Toro are donating all their proceeds from Wolfman to a good cause. I want to think that's why such talented actors take on such meritless projects. This movie is boring, predictable and formulaic. I stopped watching it about 2/3 through and I don't think I'll finish it. There was no suspense whatsoever. I'd rather watch any old episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer than this assembly line product.