Suitedjustice's Ongoing Mid-life Crisis

Thanks Da_Nit! I'm still stuck at home, trying to get motivated. I'm not very proud of myself, lately.

On an unrelated note, I quit Twitter today. It was a political decision involving my aversion to Hitler salutes, but I'd rather not discuss it in detail in this thread. I'm on Bluesky now, which I would recommend to anyone.

Well, I shamed myself into action. Heading off to the casino now.

GL

Thanks fid!

Unlike my last few sessions, I didn't immediately get my head beat in, so that was refreshing. After around 3.5 hours of poker, I booked a small win of $48, and 3 hours of slots added another $108, so it was a good day back. I'll try to get back there tomorrow to see if I can get a winning streak going.

After yesterday's session, I watched the Sound of Music. It had earned a place on my movie bucket list in part from winning a bunch of awards and accolades; but also I've been curious lately as to why it is that I enjoy musicals, and if I could find a classic well-loved example that I didn't like.

For more than fifty years, I'd just assumed that I didn't like the genre, and I stayed away. Wasn't for me. I like action, and historical dramas, and sci-fi, and fantasy if it's done well. There were exceptions: the South Park movie being a musical, but i could write that off to just being a movie version of a TV show that I enjoyed, one with some songs in it.

I also loved Moulin Rouge the one time I saw it, but I was rolling hard on molly at the time, and I have to believe that most people would really like that particular movie on that particular drug.

In the past year, thanks to my movie bucket list, I've seen The Red Shoes, West Side Story, and Singin' in the Rain, all musicals, and you can scroll back in this blog and see how much I enjoyed them all, which was quite a bit.

With The Sound of Music, however, I believed that I'd finally hit my limit. There was nothing in this movie to draw my interest. Singing nuns? Repressed mid-20th century Austrian gentry? A gaggle of unruly kids? No, no and no, thank you.

What I didn't know, in advance, was that the director was Robert Wise, who also made West Side Story, The Haunting, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Wise was a director with real vision. He knew how to compose epic scenes across unrelated genres. The opening scene of The Sound of Music is so universally known that it's almost a cliché.

Salzburg, Austria looks gorgeous, and Wise only magnifies the beauty in frame after frame of exterior shots.

None of that, though, takes away from his interiors. Check out the Fellini-esque use of black and white interacting and contrasting as we stroll down epic corridors through the beginning of the wedding scene, as the nuns give up one of their own to marriage. But, this being a color presentation, notice the shift in emphasis from black and white to red and gold.

So, yeah. now I like yet another musical. It's a great movie to look at, and the songs are all familiar, having insinuated themselves into the culture a few years before I was born. The plot, as with most musicals, is on the thin side, but it's serviceable. Nazis enter the scene for a short, belated Act III, so there's a reasonable semblance of suspense and action, and the romance plays out well enough to justify the songs.

What can I say? I fell for it.

Saw an interview with Julie Andrews some years back. She was talking about the opening scene; in those days, of course, they used a helicopter to get shots like that.

Apparently, she's a pretty small person; she said, "and the damn thing kept knocking me down!". They had to do several takes, because the downdraft was stronger than her.

My sisters watched The Sound of Music for about... oh and I would say about 3 digits amount of times, about as much as they watched Dirty Dancing, I would fathom... My niece also watched The Sound of Music XXX number of times (and eventually would end up being a singer/studying music) and despite this, I have yet to watch it once. The musicals I did enjoy - which granted, are not many -, were Hair (directed by Milos Foreman and pertaining to the hippie movement of the 60s), Dancer in the Dark (with Bjork as the main character), Grease was fine and The Wizard of Oz is as GOAT as can be, imho.

Anyhow, good to see you posting again Suited and putting in some winning hours ; you got this

Wife loves it.

Modern drones have made these sorts of shots a lot more accessible to the budget filmmaker. I can't judge whether or not if it takes some of the wonder out of it.

Thanks Dubnjoy000! I saw Hair many years ago, and liked it, though I might have been too young to grasp all the themes. Same goes for Tommy. I liked it as a kid on a sort of visceral level, without trying to piece together the symbolism. Dancer in the Dark was good, but super depressing. Von Trier pushed the bleakness to the point where I almost started laughing as a defense mechanism. Grease was on HBO several times a day for years when I was a kid, back when cable only had 13 channels, and 9 of them sucked, so it became more of a fixture in my viewing life than a piece to be judged or critiqued. Same goes for The Wizard of Oz, although if it's on I'll always make time for the transition from black and white to color.

Looks like the film put me in touch with my feminine side 😒

Oh, I forgot to include this homage.

I love this kind of fun movie facts. 😀

I once knew a guy who's seen The Sound of Music dozens of times as well. If I remember correctly, he once told me he'd put it on every day for like a month.

+1!

The movie I personally watched the most in my life, which would approach 3 digits, I fathom, and mostly when I was 15, was The Doors by Oliver Stone. Not exactly a musical, but not very far, imho. The Song Remains the Same by Led Zeppelin cannot exactly qualify as a musical, more so as a musical album, but definitely one which completely changed my music discography to come at the age of 13

I couldn't find it, but I remember hearing a punk version of My Favorite Things a long time ago I thought SJ might like. Lyrics something like, "roses with thorns and bees that sting/These are a few of my favorite things."

Of course, I might've imagined that.

Lot of good punk covers out there.

I have jury duty tomorrow at 8AM, 45 minutes away from my apartment. That's going to be rough given my disjointed sleep schedule. Also, I won't have my all-important juror questionnaire with me, as they never sent it to me in the mail.

I'm not going to try to get out of being selected; however, if asked if there's any reason why I might be ineligible to serve, I will mention that..

(1) I don't agree with civil asset forfeiture laws when applied to routine police stops, as it's an incentive for the state for perform the equivalent of highway robbery in order to increase revenue, and the legal fiction that they are charging the money they seize rather than the person they steal it from, so that they don't have to muck about with any presumption of innocence, is monstrous.

(2) I do believe in the principle of jury nullification, so that in cases where charges are unjust or unwarranted, but proven beyond a reasonable doubt, I will consider voting to acquit.

My Polish grandmother had two favorite films, Sound Of Music and Coming To America.

I always thought the whole idea of them needing to escape because the Nazis absolutely needed a naval officer in there military from land locked Austria as kind of silly.

How much does jury duty pay?

I was selected twice, the last time being a few months ago (in May) when I was still in Argentina, dealing a whole bunch of (legal and emotional) stuff, so there was absolutely no way in hell I was going to get back for it, even if they did threaten a (5k) fine and/or legal actions against me if I did not respond within 10 days - which is completely lol given that a good percentage of residents of Dawson (about 40%) are only seasonal and thus will not get their mail within 10 days - and had no just reason to turn down the selection (which I did/Argentina residency). Are they as strict in the USA if you do not comply???

Agreed. The plot is there to prompt a bit of action and character development in between songs, and not much else.

Is it that the principle behind the lightness of opera and musical plots is to avoid getting the audience too invested in the story details, as that might make the songs seem like annoying interruptions? Just a guess on my part.

I don't know, Dubnjoy000. I'm a jury virgin. A Jurgin.

Very interesting about theory about the plot in musicals. A Westside Story had a good plot but I guess for obvious reasons.

Yeah I'm just spitballing.

Gambelina brought up the idea that they might send me home and make me come back another day if I didn't bring my juror questionnaire, so I found one online, but I don't have a printer at home.

My old boss was nice enough to let me pop into the office and print a questionnaire, and I'm glad that I did, as there is a section of the form where I get to write my views about jury nullification and civil asset forfeiture, which is much better than me trying to mumble my way through them in front of a judge and district attorney.

Two mildly interesting jury stories. Maybe not even that high.

First, I got a notice that I was selected for jury duty for the city and county of Broomfield. In 2001, Broomfield broke off from the counties it used to be in. The post office is there, even for some people not in Broomfield.

Since the offices are about a mile away, I walked over one day and pointed out that I don't actually live in Broomfield; would they still like me to come? Nope.

-------------------------------

A few months later, the county I actually live in sent a notification. Our offices are down in Golden, so that was an early morning commute to get there on time.

The case I got assigned to was a murder case. The defense pretty much admitted he'd done it; the case was hinging on their claim that he was so drunk and/or high that he didn't realize what he was doing (IIRC, or something close to that).

The prosecution brought a charge of second-degree (again, IIRC) murder, for which they have to prove six specific things (which I don't remember now). When they finally got around to asking me (on day 3 of jury selection) some questions, I pointed out that our job was not to ensure the defendant did not "get away with something"; it was to decide whether the prosecution demonstrated that all six of the points were true. If they brought charges that they could not prove, that's on them.

The prosecution thanked me for my time, but said my services would not be needed during voir dire.

Been a few years but if you got picked for a jury in Houston where I lived it was like $40 a day. That would barely cover the cost of parking downtown and a sandwich for lunch. Add in the mileage that someone like FormallyTD has to drive and yeah not good.

Honesty and the letter of the law. WP.

I expect it to be peanuts.

I made it early and found the cheap parking garage downtown, while only committing one minor moving violation.

Now the waiting begins. That's my only pair of non-jeans in the foreground.