Quote of the Day/Week- Werner Herzog

Today, we quip one of our favorite German film directors Werner Herzog as we conclude a month-long series-within-a-series dedicated to quotes from famous Germans.

While researching this, we found out that Herzog is the first film director to make a film on every continent, including Antartica!

The 69-year-old director has just completed work on a documentary called "Death Row" about death row inmates in America. The subject should be a unique one from Herzog's vantage point as many Europeans find the fact that America executes inmates extremely unsettling, while more than 50 percent of Americans seem to support capital punishment in spite of conclusive proof of wrongful executions.

(Full disclosure: I am highly opposed to capital punishment, and I am a long-time supporter of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty).

We get today's quote from the Les Blank documentary "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe," which was made in 1980 and originated from a bet that Herzog made with a then-unknown documentary filmmaker named Errol Morris, who has since become an Academy-Award winner. Morris's latest documentary "Tabloid" was an art-house hit earlier this year:

"If you want to do a film, then steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and just do it."


SIDEBAR ONE: We found out yesterday that actress Anne Hathaway, whom I have admired since she made the 2005 independent film "Havoc" and has since made box office successes, such as "The Devil Wears Prada," is getting engaged. We should wish the actress, who turned 29 earlier in the month well, but frankly we are as jealous as Daffy Duck! Assuredly, anyone wanting more info on Hathaway's personal life can watch "TMZ" as we are moving on to other things.

SIDEBAR TWO: This might seem like a headline from the fake news publication "The Onion," but it is in fact an actual headline from the current issue of "Seattle Weekly:" "The gay softball team that wasn't gay enough has reached a settlement."

Indeed, in 2008, the San Francisco-based gay softball team D2, which finished second at the Gay Softball World Series in Seattle, was disqualified because they allegedly had two or three bisexual or heterosexual players. We first heard about this from the same publication, and blogged about it last year (search our 'gay politics' tag to learn more).

Apparently, the matter went to court, and it has reached a binding resolution. We can imagine that this story may actually be a topic of discussion for both gay rights activist/sex advice columnist Dan Savage and a right-wing talking head,like Rush Limbaugh, who may use this as an example of extreme political correctness (but, I guess rebel-flag waving Confederate apologists in 2011 is ok?!),.......only in America!

Republican Humor- Dear Casey

The following is meant to be political satire. Just so everyone in Generation Z or those of you from Belarus get the joke, Dear Casey or The Long Distance Dedication was a segment that was "Casey's Top 40," an American fm-radio music show when I was a teenager in the 1980s.


"Dear Casey:


I know that even though you are a political liberal like myself and a fellow person of Middle-Eastern heritage, you may hesitate to play this song for a truck driver I don't know in Sioux City, Iowa, as I am making this request for poltical reasons. Casey, I am afraid that the Republicans will nominate another execution-happy evangelist governor of Texas for their presidential candidate, and should Rick Perry actually become president I would have to flee America for Costa Rica or Iceland. Even though I'm sure those countries are wonderful places, I am not fluent in either Spanish or Icelandic, and I imagine this would make life very difficult for me. So, Casey, it is for these reasons that I am dedicating Conway Twitty's 1973 smash hit "You've Never Been This Far Before" to that truck driver I don't know in Sioux City, Iowa, in the hopes that_ and I never thought I'd say this_ vote for Mitt Romney in his town straw poll."

Conway Twitty (1933-1993) is alas no longer with us. I am actually a fan of his music (believe it or not) even though I'm not usually a listener of country music. Twitty was originally from Helena, Arkansas, and he is also known for his "Hello Darlin'" which was a big hit for him in 1971. Anyone living in the Chapel Hill, NC, area (not where I reside) may find vinyl records of his albums at All Day Records in nearby Carrboro, NC.

Casey Kasem is thankfully alive and well at age 79, which means that if Twitty were still alive they would be about the same age. Kasem was born in Detroit, and is active in both politically liberal and Arab-American causes (I am actually a Turkish-American). In addition to the famous radio show he hosted, Kasem was the voice of Shaggy on the original "Scooby-Doo," which first aired in 1969.

Quote of the Week- Chester Arthur

It is quite ironic that Vermont, which is perhaps the most liberal state in America, was the birth state of Republican President Chester Arthur (1829-1886). Arthur, who was the 21st president, got his promotion to the oval office rather quickly as his predecessor James Garfield was assasinated by Charles J. Guiteau, who was later hanged in Washington, DC, in spite of considerable evidence that Guiteau was mentally ill.

Garfield was shot in Long Brnach, New Jersey, on July 2, 1881, but the 20th president remained alive until Sept. 19.

Arthur would only serve out the remainder of Garfield's term, and his own would end abruptly as he died on Nov. 17, 1886, at age 57, a mere 103 days after leaving office on March 4th of that year.

This quote illustrates that some of the men who were president in the 19th century may have problems coping with the modern presidency:

"I may be president of the United States, but my private life is nobody's damned business."

This month, we hope to quote famous New Englanders around Monday of each week. Last week, we quoted poet E.E. Cummings.

SIDEBAR: Though I missed the film's screenings in North Carolina, I am very interested in a new documentary film by Trenton, NJ, filmmaker Kevin J. Williams called "Fear of a Black Republican" even though I'm neither African-American or a Republican. As one might expect, the very conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is featured in the film.

The documentary will be screening in Wilmington, Del., on July 28 at 7:00 p.m.

Special Quote of the Week- Albert Camus

Today, we conclude with a spillover entry from the month of May, in which we posted quotes from famous novelists, with a quip from the late French writer Albert Camus
(1913-1950). Like the subject of our other entry on our other blog who was George Orwell (1905-1950), both writers were born abroad and died at age 46. While Orwell was born in India, Camus was born in Algeria. He often wrote about the plight of the north African country which remains an area of concern today given the political upheveal in neighboring Libya. Prior to the Libyan mess, there were earlier uprisings in neighboring Tunisia, which lead to the 'Arab Spring."

In addition to his criticism of colonialism, Camus was an outspoken critic of the death penalty, saying that it would never deter perspective murderers because 'the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in the state of equilibrium.'

Alas, the likes of Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va) and Gov. Rick Perry (R-Tex.) and others on the anti-intelllectual right will assuredly always find a way to dismiss any logic that challenges their self-righteous Christian hypocricy.

McDonnell will be speaking at the Virginia United Methodist Assembly Center in Blackstone, Va. on June 11th, according to Eskii Kebede of "The Collegiate Times," the Virginia Tech student-run newspaper in Blacksburg, Va. The topic will be the faith of the founding fathers. Assuredly, any arguments about how a man who sees himself as an upstanding Christian can support the morally inconsistent pro-death penalty argument will not be brought forth.

Camus, who recieved the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, is known for three novels "The Stranger" (1942), "The Plague" (1947) and "The Fall" (1956).

Surreally enough, the much-heralded Turkish film director Zeki Demirkubuz loosely adapted "The Stranger" into his well-recieved 1999 film "Yazgi" ("Fate). I'm sure Camus would have been proud; here is his quote:

"An intellectual is someone who mind watches itself."