by Mike Shea on 26 January 2004
Proving that all is not lost in Hollywood, Return of the King won four Golden Globe awards including best director and best drama. Those positions are usually grabbed up by snobbier pictures like Monster.
The Oscar nominations are out with Return of the King nominated for eleven Academy Awards. Awards like this make me worried that Lord of the Rings won't hold up in ten or twenty years. Remember, Gladiator and Titanic both got a lot of awards and they both suck now.
The BBC has a great history of the Moleskine including an official pronunciation, mol-a-skeen-a. If you care at all for these little books from heaven, read on.
I wrote an article called What Do We Write on Moleskinerie.com. Fancy faux-leather notebooks don't matter, fancy pens don't matter, only our words matter.
One of the other contributing editors of Moleskinerie, Danny Gregory, has a wonderful blog full of his illustrations and drawings. I am jealous of his talent. His book is available on Amazon.com, I've already ordered a copy.
I knew when I read it that this interview with John Rhys-Davies would cause a big stir. Well, the stir has started with this this article on the reaction to Rhys-Davies's words. I will not try to summarize it here because the whole problem with this situation is people mis-quoting and misinterpreting what he is saying. There are a couple of interesting lines, though, that we would all do well to consider. We are losing the ability to sit down and be able to have a tolerable argument. Because of the constant bombardment of political correctness we cannot just discuss things openly anymore. Important discussions or decisions are crushed under beaurocratic rules for political correctness. The fact that any state is pressuring Rhys-Davies to apologize is ridiculous. He is free to say whatever he wants. He is only an actor.
Do you think that having over 500 casualties in Iraq is a bad number? Great Britain lost three million soldiers in World War 1. Three million. America lost half a million in World War 2. Five hundred soldiers would probably die in drunk driving accidents if they were back in the states. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the war, but lets not get all horrified by the deaths of 500 people. We've lost one thousand times that number in the second world war.
I don't know who will win the democratic nomination. Clark is my first choice, but I'd vote for Kerry if I have to. I don't care about democratic vs. republican (fascism vs. communism if you ask me), but I do care about the issues. To get Mike Shea's endorsement a candidate must be pro-choice, anti-NRA, pro-civil liberties, and willing to remove the anti-constitutional portions of the Patriot Act.
I'd like to see a candidate that puts this terrorism into prospective. Israel has lived with it for decades. We will have to live with it for decades. You cannot win a "War on Terror", it's an emotion for Christ's sake. Terrorism is now a part of our lives but we shouldn't radically change our lives to combat it. We have done more damage to our country in reactions to the attacks of 9-11 than the attacks did themselves. Overreactions are our biggest problem. I want a candidate who won't overreact at every situation or public opinion vote he sees. Be smart.