Quote of the Week

You’re in America, act like a criollo, for chrissakes.
--Enrique Fernandez, “P.C. Rider,” The Village Voice, June 18, 1991, vol. 36, no 25

TV Quote of the Week

America really thought they had it dialed in, money hanging out the butt. But it was all just a bunch of ones and zeros in a computer someplace. So, when that bomb went ka-blooey and the electromagnetic pulse turned all the ones and zeros into plain old zeros, everyone's like, "No way!" Now, America's just another broke ex-super power looking for a handout and wondering why.
--Jessica Alba, Dark Angel, "Pilot"

Quote of the Week

What do they know of America who only America know?
--Daniel J. Flynn, Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America

Quote of the Week

The officers and I did not assume that the United States was going to decline like those ancient empires. That is not the lesson of classical history. Rather, it is that change is inescapable and the more gradual and hidden the change, the more decisive: the great shifts in fortune for ancient empires were usually not apparent to those living at the time.
--Robert D. Kaplan, An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America's Future

Quote of the Week

American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those who have seen America only in their dreams.
--Pico Iyer, Video Night in Kathmandu and Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East

Quote of the Week

Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don't. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do.
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Random Thoughts

I have seen more people carrying umbrellas on sunny days during the last three years than I have ever seen carry umbrellas on sunny days during the ten years prior to that. In fact, it seems like I see more people carry umbrellas on sunny days nowadays than on rainy days.

The problem with speaking truth to power is that you actually have to speak the truth.

You can tell a computer is old when it shuts off every time you expect it to stay on automatically and stays on every time you expect it to shut off automatically.

I can't help but wonder how many of the people questioning Obama's citizenship would welcome a Schwarzenegger presidency.

Should I find it ironic that the most honest stuff I write is usually written under a pen name?

History's chief purpose is not to let us know what good people we have been.

It is not a kindness to encourage the poor to spend money they don't have on stuff they don't really need just because someone other than them thinks it to be fashionable.

The past ain't what it used to be and neither is the future.

I, tú, am America.

I never realized how American I was until I went to Mexico. I never realized how Mexican I was until I came back.

How realistic is it to expect an intelligent response to global warming when local politicians are still being constantly surprised by the fact that it often snows during the winter and gets hot during the summer?

People rarely pay back money with the same urgency that they borrow it. Even when the people from which they borrow it are themselves poor.

Whenever a riot occurs, people rarely go after the most deserving targets. Instead they go after the most vulnerable.

Quote of the Week

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America?
--W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

Pop Song of the Week: "Welcome to the United States"

Thank God America's immigration policies have become more sensible since Frank Zappa died, right?

Movie Song of the Week: "America"

Since we seem to have an American theme today, why should I not repost this?

TV Quote of the Week

America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.
--Jeff Daniels, The Newsroom, "We Just Decided To"

The Invention of Lying and the Myth of America

I once rented the 2009 movie The Invention of Lying from the local library, and one of the first things that came to my mind while I was watching it was the notion that this imaginary world where the movie is set -- a locale where no one can say anything but the harshest and bluntest of truths -- was supposed to be a fictional version of America. Or at least a fictional version of America as it must have seemed to English actor/writer Ricky Gervais when he first came over to this country from his homeland.

After all, Americans tend to take pride in being more honest than the English, more direct than the English and less likely to shade the truth with diplomatic white lies than the English.

So while the latter half of the film can be seen as a religious satire, the original inspiration might have been the temptation to poke fun at us "straight-talking" Yanks in such a way that most of us wouldn't catch on.

Of course, if you don't like that theory, I have others... but I like this one best.

As for the religious aspect of the movie, I found the premise of the movie to be a lot kinder and sympathetic toward religious people than I expected even though I found its idea of religion being just another form of lying to be more than a bit questionable.

Then again, the most questionable part of the movie was the part that expected me to believe that a woman who looked like Jennifer Garner could ever fall in love with a guy who looked like Ricky Gervais. After all, Gervais is not exactly famous for playing likable characters in his native England, let alone romantic heartthrobs. And though his character in this movie is a lot more sympathetic than, say, the character he played in the UK version of The Office, the romance between his character and Garner's still seemed less than convincing.

Then again, when I look upon some of the more unlikely real-life relationships I have witnessed since this movie was first released, it seems more and more believable. Or at least as believable as one might expect from a movie about lying.

TV Quote of the Week

America doesn't have a monopoly on bad taste.
--Colin Baker, Doctor Who (The First Series), "Revelation of the Daleks"

Movie Quote of the Week

This is not America?
--Gerald Mohr, Gilda (1946)

Movie Song of the Week: “America”

From 1980's The Jazz Singer, it's Neil “You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet” Diamond singing one of his most famous songs. And who's that sitting in the audience next to Sir Laurence Olivier? Could it be Lucie Arnaz? It's about time she was represented on this site.



As a bonus, this week I also post the classic song of the same name from 1961's West Side Story. It's one of the few American tunes I've heard that best illustrate the other side of the immigration story. Of course, this isn't the first time I posted it so if you care to see what I've said about this song in the past, please go here.

I hope you all enjoy both tunes.

Movie Quote of the Week

This is America. You cannot kill every person just because you get mad at them. You have to have permission first.
--Cheech Marin, Things Are Tough All Over (1982)

Movie Quote of the Week

Major, we already run the misfits outta our country. We sent ‘em back to England.
--Tom Selleck, Quigley Down Under (1990)

America, C'est les Autres

You know what the biggest problem in America is right now? Other people.

Apparently, if the Internet is to believed, it's other people who are responsible for racism, it's other people who are responsible for the mortgage crisis, it's other people who are responsible for global warming and it's other people who are responsible for the drug problem.

Of course, no one ever admits to being one of those other people. And even if they did, there's no guarantee that they would change. Plus it's very hard to control the actions of other people or at least to control them as well as we can control our own actions.

Yet it sure is nice that we are all agreed on the root cause of all our problems. Especially since it spares us the trouble of having to examine any responsibility we might have for such problems.

Of course, there's always the chance that someday we might actually get around to solving all those problems I just mentioned. But undoubtedly, those other people would just mess things up again...

Thoughts About Sex

1. Is America really a puritanical country or are we a hedonist country in a state of denial?

2. When it comes to one's sexual past, men tend to exaggerate, women tend to downplay.

3. Conservatives always exaggerate the amount of sex in popular culture. Liberals always downplay the amount of sex in popular culture. And yet conservatives tend to produce more children than liberals, either because liberals are more adept in their knowledge of contraceptives or else because conservatives, when dealing with sex, tend to prefer practice over theory while liberals tend to be the exact opposite.

4. No matter how liberal or conservative our culture becomes, the popular culture will never be liberal enough for liberals nor conservative enough for conservatives. At best it will reach a happy medium.

5. Pornography is that which sexually arouses the weirdo down the block. Erotica is what arouses people like you or me.

6. Men find a naked woman to be far sexier than a woman clad in lingerie yet women prefer lingerie over nudity when they have a choice.

Movie Song of the Week: “America”

Just to show that not all my tastes in movie musicals are strictly -- ahem -- black and white, there's this tune. It's one of the most famous songs from the 1961 movie West Side Story, which incidentally was the first movie musical I ever liked enough to buy its soundtrack album.

Although this song has often been described as a mindless celebration of assimilation, it has always seemed to me to be a lot more complex than that, especially the way it's presented in this movie. I have yet to hear another song that so adeptly sums up the complicated love-hate relationship so many Latinos like myself have with America. True, I myself have never experienced any of the prejudice that Bernardo and his friends complain about in this movie, but I know older relatives who have.

And yet... I love America. If for no other reason than the fact that it gave my late father the opportunity to achieve a success he never could have achieved in his native Mexico...