The London Olympics Opening Ceremony

I don't know how most of you feel about it but I thought the London Opening Ceremony paled in comparison to the Beijing Ceremony.  Now I admit that Beijing was a tough act to follow but can't help but think that London didn't even try very hard to match it.  Perhaps realizing that it was futile to top or equal the splendor of the Beijing ceremony they settled for a mish mash of everything British that was at times quite silly and downright boring.  I endured it for two hours and realizing that I wasn't going to miss anything too special or grand, turned it off and went to sleep, didn't even feel like taping it certain that I had gotten the gyst of it and didn't much care for it. Judging from the mixed comments I saw today, it doesn't look like I missed anything spectacular.

The Tragedy of Madness.

By now everyone must have heard the horrific massacre at the movie theater in Colorado.  Twelve dead in cold blood and more than fifty wounded but I suspect the dead toll will continue to rise.  And why?  Because a once brilliant, promising student plunged into the dark world of madness and nobody saw it coming.  We try to protect ourselves from overt terrorism at the airport with scanning machines and secret service agents but how do we protect ourselves from the madness within our shores?  How do we protect ourselves from a man bent on destruction and self destruction?  This man was an American citizen, by all accounts what we classify as a "winner" yet now he joins the ranks of the many monsters that preceded him.  If  his parents saw the signs of his mental deterioration, shame on them for not doing something about it before it was too late.  Now they'll have to live with the blood of the innocent, fun loving victims on their hands.  And as for us, just another horrific example of the madness all around us we have to live with.  Just another horrific example of the fragility of our lives.  A madman or a terrorist can invade our subways, our stores, our supermarkets, our gyms or anywhere were a lot of people gather and carry out his monstrous deed.  He has nothing more to lose because he's already lost his soul so his goal is to take as many people with him as possible.  I suspect that in the dark world Mr. Holmes has retreated to, he feels like a hero today.  The man who once tried to be a great healer had successfuly made the switch to a great destroyer.  I suspect this man always had megalomaniac tendencies and it was only a matter of time before madness overtook him.  What will happen to him now?  Unfortunately nothing much.  He'll probably spend the rest of his sorry days in a mental institution, drugged out of his mind and pacing with all the other lost souls of the world.  He will never confront the horror of his actions.  He'll never think of the people he ambushed and murdered in cold blood or the ones he wounded and perhaps blinded or paralized for life.  We have the torment, because every time a horrific thing like this happens, we lose a little bit of ourselves.

Goodbye Ernie

A great actor has died, and make no mistake about it because Ernest Borgnine was a great actor.  During his long, spectacular career, he gifted us with many outstanding performances.  He will be forever remembered for his breakthrough performance as the lonely, lovelorn butcher in Marty, of course, but this fiery actor proved himself with many great performances long before that.  Sure he was typecast as the heavy in most of those movies but his performances were great nonetheless.  He acted with such power, such magnetism, putting the different sides of his personality in each and every film, that when he came on the screen we were mesmerized.  He was a star and an actor, and we were lucky to have him doing what he loved to do for so long.  I honored him by watching some of  his movies when I got the news and that's where he'll live forever, on the screen, for the enjoyment of generation after generation.