I had no idea Mark Cuban was blogging.

Excellently written too. (Think he has an editor?)

If you want to know what a billionaire thinks about, check it out. Especially the April posts. I don't download music and I don't watch basketball, so his May posts were a little less interesting. I think I'll be studying that one.

Disney

Home video became available at the end of the Seventies, so I grew up at a time when you had one shot to see a great movie, and then, if you were lucky it'd be shown on ABC, NBC, CBS or PBS at some indeterminate time after that: at least a year or two.

The good news was that there was "The Wonderful World of Disney" on ABC on Sunday nights. Of course, that only worked until we got into fundamentalist Christianity BIG TIME and our Sunday evenings were booked up.

We were Wesleyans, which I happened to be proud of (though not proud enough to actually proselytize for). Wesleyans are an offshoot of Methodists who broke away because we couldn't abide the thought of slavery. We were abolitionists, whereas those who continued under the name of Methodist were content to await some sort of accommodation via the government. Those who weren't finding rationalizations for slavery in the Bible, that is.

I'm a Lutheran now, but I wouldn't be, if I could convince my wife to go to the local Wesleyan Church in Fridley, MN. (Just south of I-694, between Central Ave. and University Ave.) I wouldn't accept Lutheran teaching if I found it incompatible with the way I was raised, but the fact is... It's good. I've enjoyed all the sermons of all three of our pastors (so far), especially the new guy! I really like the way he sticks to the Biblical text, only diverging into personal tales about their application in his own life.

Whoa!! That should have been a separate post. The only reason I don't do it now is because I doubt that I'll get this material into a post later.

I was talking about Disney movies. Was Winnie the Pooh a Disney movie? I could find it here - I've probably stomped on it 10 times in the past month - but it's not worth it to look for it now. That was the first movie I remember seeing. And, I'm told, I spent half the movie crying in the lobby. I suspect "half" was an exaggeration, because, when we bought the Video, I remembered almost all of it.

But, alas, Winnie the Pooh was pretty much the last of Walt's efforts. I remember people bitching about what he did to weaken the morals of "Little Red Riding Hood" and others of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, which were all about avoiding wild animals, perverts, rapists and mass murderers (especially if they lived under bridges). But what Disney produced in the Seventies would have driven Walt to homicide himself. Look at Rescuers: the art is almost as bad as Hanna-Barbara. The actors who played the voices are fine: Bob Newhart, Zsa Zsa Gabor, a bunch of people I would have recognized at first utterance in 1976, but have completely forgotten now (except that I know I knew them then), et al.

I mean, For God's Sake! How in the Hell did anyone think that this movie belonged in the same genre as "Sleeping Beauty?"! I mean, it's not completely awful, like, say, "Morons from Outer Space," but it's nowhere near the quality of a "Pocahantas."

The advent of "Star Wars" was very much welcome after all that dreck, and I still feel enough gratitude that I will see the last prequel of that series, with the memories of the "heroes" and anti-heroes of early- and mid-Seventies movies and TV as my comparisons.

Steppenwolf? F*** me to tears!! I'll take Luke Skywalker any day!

Yeah, that's why I don't need Sartre.

Or Heideggar or Kierkegaard.

You scored as Existentialist. Existentialism emphasizes human capability. There is no greater power interfering with life and thus it is up to us to make things happen. Sometimes considered a negative and depressing world view, your optimism towards human accomplishment is immense. Mankind is condemned to be free and must accept the responsibility. Existentialist 81% Cultural Creative 63% Materialist 50% Postmodernist 44% Modernist 38% Fundamentalist 38% Idealist 31% Romanticist 25% What is Your World View? (corrected...again) created with QuizFarm.com

I don't consider it a condemnation that we're free, I consider it a blessing, as is the responsibility that comes with it to make a good thing of yourself. Rather than a bad thing... or a dead thing.

Yeah, Baby!! We are on the way!!

The competition for space tourists is heating up.

This is the way progress works: first, the people with plenty of money and leisure time buy the cool stuff (and take all the safety, financial and social risks), then the products and services are refined, costs are reduced, competition reduces prices and the rest of us get our shot at it.

Be patient: if you don't get to take a turn, be joyful that your descendants will.

I WIN!!!

I was afraid I was gonna be Princess Leia (I wanna sleep with her, not dress like her) or R2D2. At least I came off manly enough to be Luke.

This character is definitely bourgeois,

Clarence Cochran is a shopkeeper, after all. I wonder what his artistic preferences are.

David Carson, 20, of West Memphis fired four shots at Cochran with a. 45-caliber pistol, police said. One bullet struck Cochran in the left chest area, tearing through his diaphragm and liver before passing out his lower back. [ed. note: Ow! Ow-ow-ow-ow! Ow!] Cochran fired back with his. 38-caliber revolver. One shot struck Carson in the head, killing him.

A second assailant, whom police have named on an arrest warrant as Antonio Bass, 21, fled after he was shot in the shoulder by Cochran. He is still at large.

Within a day of the shootout, Crittenden County sheriff's investigator Ed Laxton assured Cochran's family that he wouldn’t face criminal charges.

I also wonder why this article says that Antonio Bass was captured upon seeking treatment, while this recent article I've quoted says he's still at large.

Philistia goes down 10-zip to the Long Hairs

I got a pack of 10 Classical Music CDs at Sam's Club about a month ago, for about 20 bucks, and it's fantastic. I've discovered that there are five guys who put out stuff that you like right off the bat: Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel, Bach and Beethoven. Make it six; Tchaikovsky belongs there too.

Unfortunately the version of Pachelbel's Canon on the set is played too fast. It certainly shows off the skill of the musicians, and no doubt helps them stay awake after their ten-thousandth performance of it, but it loses its beauty.

The good news for bored musicians is that we have machines to do that now.

[A too-little, too-late, late-inning solo homer for the Philistines.]

AAGH! They booted Scotty!!

That dude sang On Broadway as well as it's ever been done! After last night's performance, Anthony deserved the boot.

I think all of 'em deserve a professional career like the one Constantine got [he was as good as Vonzell, at least, and better than either Scott or Anthony]. Kerry and Bo are the top two, and Bo is really the best.

But, I might seriously consider paying to see any of them, with a good band and arrangements.

I was going to say that NASA's getting on the stick

but it's another group, the B612 Foundation: they had a guy testifying to the Senate that we need to start moving asteroids around now, before they start moving us around.

Geez, that was a year ago. I wondering if anything's going on.