Good News, Everyone!!

Over the years of serving up your Cup of Joe (fresh and hot), this semi-experimental online  original commentary on our collective Past, Present and Future, well, sure, there's been great focus on politics. But something happened.

Pretty much a year, two even, have been posts about the Con Man Who Swindled America.

Titanic effort has been applied all along by yours truly to resist attempting to endlessly post pithy captures our current Idiocracy. The effort has won the day, so, in the words of Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, "Good news, everyone!" More normal weird and wonderful items are making a welcome return here.

(No, I'm not turning blindly away. How could anyone? We all know what a horrible place we've become. America is now the place parents warn their children about. "And if they catch you, they'll lock you away forever.")

So.

First we heard about an Alabama man who allegedly had an Attack Squirrel, which he had been feeding meth in order to make it "aggressive", so the police better watch out! Then came The Chase after said owner of the perhaps meth-addicted Attack Squirrel.



Ok then.
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Movies have been on my mind too, as always. Especially regarding the process of making them. As a hardcore fan of the films of Stanley Kubrick, I I enjoyed this oral history about the making of the orgy scene in Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut.

"Peter Cavaciuti (Steadicam operator): Stanley’s precision was the thing I remember most. I had three lasers on the Steadicam, pointed to the ground, and when they all lined up, a grip would drop a plumb line from a string from the lens; then I’d line my lasers up, and then the grip would talk me into the mark, saying I was two inches, one inch on the mark. That level of precision was pretty exceptional. You’d very rarely do less than 20 takes. So physically and intellectually, it was demanding. Very often, Stanley would say to me that I wasn’t on my mark. I’d look down and I had my three lasers, so I’d say, “Well, I am on the mark, Stanley.” And one time Tom Cruise whispered to me, “Just move the camera, Pete.” [I realized] it was just code for saying that Stanley wanted to put the camera in a different place."

As much as he was known for being a control freak, it is much more a case of his being a collaborator - gathering very talented people, work with them for months to create the best way to tell a scene or a story, and still at the moment of shooting the scene being open to what else might be possible. 
I was also struck by descriptions of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as great to work with - helpful and contributing to the work. One doesn't spend years working on a difficult project unless their is great commitment and excitement.

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How about pretty much every way you can cook a potato?