Movies Watched -- Stand Clear of the Closing Doors (2013)

94 minute running time … strange movie, depressing … about a 13-year-old autistic boy who doesn’t go home after school (in Rockaway Beach, Queens) and instead rides the New York City subways continuously for several days in a row, experiencing all the insanity and weirdness and violence and conflict and rare kindness that surrounds him (including a great break-dancing routine by a trio of kids — the highlightof the movie for me) … his Spanish-speaking mother (an illegal Mexican) is worried sick and is desperate and sort of stuck with no money or contacts or friends, her husband is working upstate (possibly milking cows) … the whole thing is kind of hard to sit through and believe me I fast forwarded through a hell of a lot of it … but I could sort of understand what the filmmaker was getting at (about alienation and loneliness and confusion and terror and the horrors and wonders of life in the Big CIty, etc.). It wasn’t terrible, just a major downer.

From Stephen Holden: “Throughout the movie, you are forcefully reminded that time spent on the subway may be the ultimate New York grounding experience. You feel the city’s collective pulse as the entire spectrum of humanity pours around you … It stays with its characters to a wonderfully witty and understated ending.“ I didn’t find anything witty about the ending and have no idea what Holden is talking about … but it’s a capital A.R.T. art movie for sure.

From Richard Brody: “Fleischner empathetically but unsparingly depicts the fears, indignities, and degradations that Ricky endures in his largely subterranean wanderings, and movingly captures his fixations on ancillary details and incantatory phrases”

Ricky is a smart boy

Juvenescence

Yasmin Williams, yowza … encountered “Guitar Hero” at age nine:

The Inquiring Mind of Brian Lamb (VII)

In his interview with Philip Taubman on the development of the U-2 spy plane and reconnaissance satellites:

LAMB: … what did the "U" and the "2" stand for?

The Primary Suite

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Sumner Welles and the BBC

From Joseph Persico’s interview on Booknotes:

“… what you're referring to is the fact that Sumner Welles, who was the undersecretary of State in the Roosevelt administration and who was an important figure, he was Roosevelt's man. The secretary of state was Cordell Hull, and Roosevelt pretty much circumvented him and--and worked through Sumner Welles, who was an old family friend. Welles had made some sexual advances on trains, part of his--his business trips, to black porters on these trains, who reported him. This was concealed for a long time. It was two or three years before it finally erupted. Roosevelt is under tremendous pressure from people who fear that having a man with homosexual tendencies in such a sensitive position at State--we have to remember we're not talking about the current world; we're talking about the attitudes of the--of the 1940s. He's looked upon as a--as a--a security threat, and Roosevelt very unhappily eventually dismisses Sumner Welles.“

Too Old To Be Playing

Neffy with “Youth” … great voice … made me stop in my tracks … thanks to the Spotify algo … you can buy the track here….

The Inquiring Mind of Brian Lamb (VI)

In his interview with Dana Priest on mission creep in the US military:

LAMB: I can`t leave this without me asking you why your first name is pronounced “Danna?” and did [your parents] want a boy?

Listen to the Markets

Mall Cop once again perfectly on point in today’s stream:

“What do I think about the Chartered Market Technician designation? I think it's completely useless. If you want to make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, you can skip it. You don't need it to do anything, what you need to do is go through every single stock in the US stock market, look at the ones that made big moves at any point during their existence, and then you go back and search what were the patterns, what was the news, what were the market conditions, that's all, you know. You don't need anyone. You don't need any designation, certification, it's all for losers.

You need to understand how the stock market works. What makes it tick. Why and how stocks move. How different sectors move. And in what market conditions do certain sectors work better than others. That's what you need to do. Go back twenty, thirty years. You don't even need to go back that far. You can just go back the past five years, and you'll find at least three or four setups that occur over and over again.

You don't need to know anything. You don't need to do any fundamental analysis. You need to be aware of the sector. You'll outperform most people. The most important thing is avoiding all the bullshit out there, all the misinformation. There’s so much noise and bullshit out there. So many losers selling all their courses and stuff.

The closer you can get to reality, the better. Unfollow all the people on Twitter, social media. Leave all these stupid stock Discords, they are for retards. Especially if you're paying for a stock Discord, just stop. Apparently that's a thing, don't do it. The less noise the better. All you need to do is listen to the market. Pay attention. Don't listen to the news, listen to the markets.”

White Girl Arrives, I Turn Invisible

Jensen McRae, what a great voice… writing songs from her heart:

The Inquiring Mind of Brian Lamb (V)

In his interview with Stuart Rochester on the experience of American prisoners of war in Southeast Asia (mainly Vietnam):

LAMB: Here's another line in the book and it just--I was taking these out of context. `I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but the atmosphere was changing for the worse. By November, for starters, food rations at the Zoo were cut drastically and kitchen staff were no longer washing off the human fertilizer the Vietnamese used for their crops.' A lot of reference to human feces being in--in rice, you know, all over these cells. How much--explain the human fertilizer business.