Raging Bull and how I finally understand the "Joe Pesci Show".

I was a prolific SNL watcher in the early Nineties and I clearly remember the first time I saw the "Joe Pesci Show".  Of course, I knew Joe Pesci as that goofy character in Lethal Weapons and McCauley Caulkin's punching bag in the Home Alone movies.  When I got older, I watched Casino and Goodfellas, and then I started to understand the crazy violent reputation.  Recently I sat down and watched Raging Bull, which I always knew was supposed to be an American classic, but I had never seen it.  It was made in 1980 and stars Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and pretty much every other actor in every other Scorsese movie.  It is the tale of the tragic life of middle weight boxer Jake LaMotta who proceeds to act like a complete wacko to everyone around him.  Basically, now I understand that Martin Scorsese takes the same cast of characters played by pretty much the same actors and puts them in a blender and makes a plot.  It is a really cool plot with really cool characters, but all his movies have some really strong similarities, same gangsters, same dialogue.  I will say that Raging Bull is probably the most "artsy" of any Scorsese movie I have ever seen.  It is filmed in black and white, it has long scenes of rambling dialogue, and random poetic solilquies.  I will admit though, there wasn't much explanation about how De Niro transformed from a psycho hotheaded boxer to a traveling method actor.  Ultimately though, it is a classic and definitely worth watching, although it could have used a few more f bombs from Pesci and good beat down or car bombing at the end.

The Sun Also Rises

"One  generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever....The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose....The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits....All the rivers run into the the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come; thither they return again."

Ecclesiastes 1: 3-7

So tonight I finished The Sun Also Rises.  I finished it with wine, which is the right way to finish a Hemingway  novel set in Spain, Italy, or France.  You can finish Steinbeck and Faulkner novels with whiskey, but Hemingway deserves something a little special. 

This is one of the great "lost generation" novels of the 1920's.  Right up there with Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise.  It is written from the perspective of a wounded American WWI vet that is a journalist in Paris.  He goes on a trip with a bunch of friends to Spain where he goes fishing in the Pyrenees and winds up at a fiesta/bullfight in Pamplona.  They also drink and party, a lot.  It reads like a longer, more interesting Panama City spring break tale from the old college days.   I read a little about the history behind it.  He wrote it when he was 26 years old, after actually going to the real festival of St. Fermin, that is the plot is based on.  The actual people he went there with have similar names or backgrounds to the characters.  Like anyway Hemingway novel, the plot is relatively simple, but it is done right and real, to the point you know what it would be like to stand there and watch.

I am definitely not the first one to do it, but whenever I read one of the "Lost Generation" novels, I can't help but draw parallels between the young adults of the 1920's and my generation.  At the turn of the twentieth century, the world was supposed to get better, and better, forever. We were supposed to have gotten rid of all the barberry of the past.  Technology and innovation would lead us to an ever prospering  future.  This illusion was thrust upon the youth, just to have the butchery of WWI, the decadence of the 1920's, and finally the crush of the Great Depression, destroy the fairy tale they had been told to believe.  As with my generation in the late 1990's, we came of age in a world that was going to be made forever better by technology and the Internet.  I was taught in college that we had developed such a sophisticated system of economic controls, that we would never have another severe recession.  Fannie Mae was going to give us 100% home ownership.  Our nation could never be challenged militarily and the future would be peaceful because of it.  The EU was a brilliant model of the future.  I believed every bit of it, and now I realize that it all had been a huge lie.  It came crashing down on 9/11 and has pretty much not stopped since.  Just to take a look at where we are now,  assuming that a child becomes aware of their world around the age of five or so, you have to find a seventeen year old American or older to tell you what it is like to live in a nation that is not at war.  You have to find a ten year old to tell you what it is like to turn on the TV and not hear the word recession or high unemployment.  Anyway, it sucks and it would be nice if you could make it not effect you, but you can't.  It seems all the more worse because we knew it at a time when it was supposed to be right.  In the end though, I guess you have to approach it like Romero, the bullfighter in the novel.  Take something that is violent and awful and horrible to look at, and find a way to do it in a way that is right and beautiful, despite it all.  And in the real end, you have to look to the verses from Ecclesiastes that are in the novel's introduction.  I guess Ecclesiastes can probably answer a lot of angst.           

So, this was really my last major Hemingway novel left.  I try to read only one a year, it isn't like they are making more of them.  There are still several of the less popular works out there and I'll dig them up somewhere.  I really should be okay for a while anyway.

Breaking Bad and Oh Me! Oh Life! Oh the questions of these recurring,

The is the most fame Walt Whitman has gotten since Dead Poets Society.  Well, I have spent the customary 24 hour "thinking" period for the last episode of the first half of the last season of Breaking Bad.  Most of this contemplating was done while I was working in our flower beds for three hours this afternoon, because when else is the perfect time to think about the intricacies of international crime than when you are planting yews?  In any event I have come  up with a few thoughts on the future of Walt and company....

SPOILER ALERT

If you will remember that in an earlier blog I did predict that Walt would kill Mike.  I missed the events leading to it and the method, but I did get that right, so maybe I will be on track with a few more ideas/predictions:

So Hank has his first hint on Walt.  We knew this was coming for the past five years.  I find the copy of Leaves of Grass from Gail lying on the back of the toilet a little sloppy, but I can see it being overlooked.  We know from how quick Hank zeroed in on Gus that he is a really smart cop and it won't take him long to piece it all together.  The random "gambling winnings", the car purchases, the way Skylar is acting (hiding the kids), the random connection between Jesse and Walt, even going back to the incident with Jesse's car and the Tuco killing/Walt being found wandering in the road.  Of course the whole notion of Walt being a drug kingpin is ludicrous, that is the point of the whole show, so it will take him some time to come around.  Then he will check the surveillance tape of his office and he will know.  But there are several problems between him realizing this and throwing Walt in the back of a squad car.  First, he needs real evidence, not just scribbles in a book.  If Walt is really "out" (and who knows if he is), there wouldn't be much anymore.  Unless he tailed him to the storage locker where the money is.  There are no more local people to even trail, they are all out like Jesse or they are dead.  He won't get any help with it either.  Second, there is still the same reason why Skylar doesn't tell, it would ruin the family.  Third, and this might very well be the biggest factor, it would ruin his career.  Even if he brought Hank in himself, it would be impossible for the DEA to believe that this meth mastermind was running a 100 million dollar drug cartel for a year without his brother in law in charge of the DEA running protection for him.  They fired Hank's boss because he ate a few dinners at Gus's house.  Imagine what would happen to Hank?  I think Hank would be forever labeled a "dirty cop", and he knows that is a reputation that stays forever.   

So here are some predictions:

When Hank comes around, he has a "get out of town by sundown" talk with Walt.  Basically telling him that everyone will be better off if he leaves.  That is why Walt is driving a vehicle with Vermont plates in the "preview scene".  

Walt is really "out", but he comes back in it because something happens.  Maybe when he moves away, he really has nothing left, so he starts back in the business.

Lydia's role is not over.  If real trouble starts again for Walt, she will somehow be behind it.   

Something is going to happen to that gigantic pile of money in the storage unit.

Somebody is going to get that ricin poison....I was close about it still being a factor.  Walt is keeping it handy.

Something is going on with the cancer tests.  This show doesn't show random scenes for no reason.  We NEVER saw the a confirmation of the fourth season test results, it cut from the waiting room to Walt having dinner and saying everything was ok.  Now in this episode we got another test, with no disclosure of the outcome.    

Maybe, Walt will redeem himself in the end, by saving Jesse and Skylar, and taking the whole thing down someway were everybody else thinks he was a great man.  Or maybe he kills half the cast!  Guess we will just have to wait until next year.  Anyway, I am ready for The Walking Dead to start again, this kind of thinking is wearing me out!