My Archives: Older

Here are my older archives, originally published at www.zigory.thinkertothinker.com, in reverse order:


The Wild
April 17th, 2006

Still enthused about our forthcoming Disney World vacation (and not only me, of course: Our three year old daughter is starting to tell strangers that she ’s going there), I went to see the animated movie The Wild last night. It is under the “Walt Disney Pictures” banner, and even rated G, so I expected it to be a picture for the whole family, of which the studio is proud, and that it may help keep me in the Disney mood.

Disappointed am I. It’s mediocre and has just about nothing in common with the Walt Disney legacy. To be sure, it is not unusually offensive (the way the usually superb Ron Howard offended me with his witless and crude destruction of Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas). It is just irritating and amateurish in its writing and direction. For those of you who know something about animation, has no one informed the director “Spaz” (his self-chosen moniker) or any of the animators the concept of the “hold”? A “hold” in animation is when the movement stops for a moment to emphasize an expression or an attitude or a gesture. It is priceless when used well (and gives the animator a few frames worth of a break, besides). Perhaps the all time masters of the hold in animation are Chuck Jones (think of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner), Tex Avery, and Bob Clampett during the golden age of Warner Brothers cartoons.

The Wild has a total of zero holds. Everyone and everything is moving twenty-four times every second from movie’s beginning to end. Who can watch that? My eyes just couldn’t take it. The attitudes and gestures were all there. They were just there ten times more often than any human mind could process.

But that could be forgiven if the story was clever, conveyed a meaningful theme and was told with clarity, drama, and humor.

Instead of clarity, every sentence of dialogue was written to sound ironic or sarcastic or “funny” or “witty,” never actually achieving real humor or wit. It’s hard to know what any character really wants if they never express themselves clearly and simply. (I suppose once in a while they did, but that was the exception.) There is no attempt to make the squirrel’s romantic crush remotely believable, and the father-son theme is trite as can be. Finally, there is so much slapstick violence (characters get hurt a lot) that I almost question the G rating. It’s a valid rating but the film is definitely too full of scares (like the far superior The Incredibles) for anyone under age 7. (This is not new in the Disney tradition, as Snow White, Bambi, Sleeping Beauty and maybe Peter Pan are also too intense for the very young).

There is no less artistry required to make a kid’s comedy animation than any adult movie. In fact, more awareness of one’s all-ages audience is required to make it entertaining and meaningful rather than irritating, boring or traumatizing. The theme of The Wild, trite as it is, has potential value but it’s ineffectively communicated.

I think “Spaz” and his crew believed they had a film so full of roll-on-the-floor belly-laughs it would excuse the flimsiness of the story. Unfortunately they were mistaken. This was not a Pixar movie if you didn’t figure that out yet. The good news is, Pixar is back in business with Disney and we can look forward to their consistently superior material, starting with “Cars” for which I have high expectations.

Thoughts on Walt Disney World
April 13th, 2006

When I was a little boy, my mother only took me to Walt Disney movies because she knew they would be good, quality movies, better than other movies for children.

I grew up learning the Walt Disney philosophy that good will triumph over evil, and you will succeed if you try hard enough. Walt Disney movies conveyed a way that things should be, an orderly, correct way parents and children may act, ideally. The movies showed examples of how civilized people behaved. They represented normal childhood (and human) emotions of fear and having strong wishes, and showed that struggling against challenges and villains is normal and is usually rewarded.

Part of the reason this had an appeal was to show me how things could be ideally, how I would someday live (when I grew up and had my own family), in contrast to the occasional turmoil, financial obstacles, and lack of orderliness in the environment of my own childhood. I could live in the Disney characters’ world for awhile, and I could even find things that were like their lives in my own life. If they went skating, I found there was a skating pond near me and I could make a goal of doing the same thing. (A similar effect resulted from my reading Beverly Cleary’s Henry Huggins books). I especially recalled Disney’s “Atta Girl Kelly” TV movie, about Seeing Eye dogs, that took place in Morristown, New Jersey, not far from where I lived. It was nice to see a place closer to my home environment represented in the ideal Disney world.

Since I felt I had the same view of the world as Walt did, and Walt was my ideal father figure when he would introduce his TV show, I really wanted to go to Disneyland but it was all the way on the other side of the country. I felt that it would be so great to meet the characters.
Then when I turned 10, Walt Disney World opened on my side of the country but it was still too far away and too expensive for my parents to afford the trip.Finally I was able to go to Disney World for the first time when I was 21. My mother had received money from a relative and decided to take my brother and me there with the money. To save money we flew down one way on PeopleExpress airlines and took the train back. Epcot had just opened and it was the Christmas season.

Being 21 seems like the wrong age, but in fact to me it was just as good as being a child’s age. I wasn’t as excited to meet Snow White as I would have been at age 10, but I really needed inspiration and fuel. I had just graduated from college and was working two minimum-wage part-time jobs to survive, as it was the recession of 1982 so there were hiring freezes just as I was trying to get my first job in film or TV. I was also struggling to get over shyness in making calls for my job hunt. The fact that no one was hiring made me start to believe that was the way of the world, someone had to die or retire before a new job opening would occur. Of course, later I learned that wasn’t true, that new jobs are always being created. My bedroom in the apartment I shared in Brooklyn with two other guys was cold, the window didn’t close all the way. I rescued a stray cat from the cold winter, but I wasn’t doing much better than the cat. So going to Disney World finally, after asking my mother to go eleven years prior, wasn’t so badly timed.

The Magic Kingdom was one of the few things in my life to that point that was actually better than I had imagined it. It was what I expected but with so many more beautiful, imaginative and fun details.

I remember on my first visit at age 21, how the customer service, the incredible willingness of everyone to help us out if we had any questions at all, was so unexpectedly comforting. Especially compared to the often very poor customer service and even lack of English comprehension in New York City.

I remember the first day we entered the park later than we had intended due to the difficulty of getting the family to work together in a timely fashion, and then it was raining a little. So the day started out with problems. But very soon, the spirit of the place had overtaken all the little obstacles, struggles and squabbles and turned it into a good day. I remember thinking, this is a good message to remember for life: a day (or a life) may start out with challenges and struggles, but if you stick with it, you will enjoy the day (or life) later as you achieve your goals.

All the messages of optimism and hope in Epcot were especially meaningful to me at a time when I could only see that I was working two uninspiring part time jobs for minimum wage and living in a cold bedroom and needed a solution. I remember wanting to work at Epcot, and asking the Kodak lady under Spaceship Earth about jobs there. She explained how to apply and that they promoted from within the company. I felt hope, and that I belonged there. I felt, this is the only company that says what I want to say, that does things the right way, and this may even be my way out of my predicament. Meanwhile I still planned (as I always had) to write books and screenplays on the side on my way to becoming a new Walt (or something like him even if on a small scale).

Even the other people visiting had such a happy, open, friendly demeanor. My family met a family from the Midwest, with a daughter, at an AT&T exhibit. We started comparing notes on the various attractions we had seen and what we recommended to each other, and I exchanged numbers with the girl. She and I visited each other a few years later, and we have remained in touch over the years, and attended each others’ weddings.

I remember having an epiphany at the Mexico pavilion. It was getting dark and the World Showcase was lighting up, we stood on line to enter the attraction and I heard the theme music and looked at the illuminated, fascinating designs in the Mexico architecture. I felt a wave of hope for my life, a wave of total certainty my life would improve and be wonderful.
This happens because Epcot and Walt Disney World are constantly reminding you that life is worth living. You are treated like a VIP by everyone. You are confronted with unexpected delights around every corner. If your days have been filled with drudgery, Walt Disney World reminds you how to play, that not every second needs to be spent working or trying to find a new job, that it’s okay to play with toys for the fun of it, like a child!

I went back to New York and the Disney feeling stayed with me for months. Nothing could get me down. Finally I applied to graduate school so that I would be more qualified for employment.
Graduate school was expensive, and there wasn’t the scholarship money that had paid for my undergraduate degree, so after one semester, I interrupted school and instead went on job searches endlessly. Soon I could do a call or an interview at the drop of a hat. I switched from job to job until I found one that suited me. I even worked at Disney World in 1989, drawing caricatures for guests, and working at their telephone switchboard. It was a great experience but I finally decided to return to my New York office job because the pay was so much better.
Now I am very fulfilled, my job pays decently, I’m doing my creative projects on the side–including self-publishing a comic book, writing scripts, doing a blog and soon a podcast– I’m happily married and I love being the best father I can be to my two children. I get to play with toys with my children every day, and watch DVDs with them of Walt’s Mickey Mouse cartoons and other Disney films. So Epcot did not lie to me, there really is hope even if you think you are in a rut. Just take action and pursue your goals and don’t settle for the unacceptable. And always make time to play and enjoy the sun!

My wife and I visited Walt Disney World every year since the time we first started dating seriously. Every time we go, we have a glow of happiness for a month or two. It reminds us how enjoyable life can be, how good customer service can be, and recharges our batteries to pursue big goals and to make our lives and our home even better. After we had our twins, we stopped going to Disney World, to focus on being great parents. This month, we are finally going to take the twins to Disney World for their first time. They are three and a half, a good first-time age, the same age I was when I briefly saw Mickey Mouse waving while sitting on a sign for “It’s A Small World,” as we sat in the boats entering that attraction at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Art Teacher’s Suspension
April 8th, 2006

Here’s an utterly absurd situation. How uneducated can educators be? The Middletown, NY, Board of Education has suspended a high school art teacher, Pete Panse, for recommending nude figure drawing classes to his advanced students. He may even be permanently fired after a 25-year career. Any student of art knows the importance of drawing nudes from life–a tradition for thousands of years–to learn anatomy and three-dimensional forms and the elements that make up the beauty of the human being. If this is not permitted, then presumably a pre-medical student also must be prevented from observing the human body. This is the Taliban’s idea of education! This is anti-education!

If a Catholic nun, Sister Wendy Beckett, isn’t afraid of nudes in art, why should anyone be? (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sisterwendy/about/index.html)

If you want to come to Mr. Panse’s defense against the ignoramuses, there is action you can take.

See: http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2006/Peter_Panse/case1.asp
and: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Reinstate_Pete_Panse/

Psychics Etc.
April 7th, 2006

Before I get to the main comment, here is a followup to my previous post: I emailed the following comments to comments@whitehouse.gov (with a link to Charles Krauthammer’s Time magazine essay of March 30, 2006 at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21843):

I would like the White House to take heed of Mr. Krauthammer’s warning and take decisive military action as soon as possible against Iran’s nuclear program as well as its terrorist training camps and its government in Tehran, who are a sworn enemy of the United States and the real, fundamental source of the 9/11 attacks.

On a less serious topic, when I was attending college decades ago, a psychic visited my campus dormitory, and gave a talk in which he “read” the minds of some of the students in attendance. He seemed to pick up detailed, private facts about friends of mine, facts they had not revealed to anyone but which they admitted to the psychic, and later to me, were true.

This one event made me consider the possibility that psychic powers may be real. I could not explain how, though, so I just filed that away as an open question. I don’t see how he could have had spies all over the campus for the amount of time necessary to learn the private thoughts of so many students.

Well, last night on Court TV, a program called “Psychic Detectives” featured that same psychic from all those years ago, named Phil Jordan (http://www.philjordan.com/). Although clearly a program designed to promote a belief in psychics, the story they told indicated that Phil Jordan was able to assist the police in a small town, with his calling forth of impeccably accurate details again and again, until they could locate evidence that would solve a murder case.

If anyone who is logic and science-oriented reads this blog (even if it’s a long time after I write this), I welcome any thoughts on the possibility of psychic powers.


Let’s Get Serious
April 1st, 2006

I work in Downtown Manhattan. Every day since Islamic fundamentalists violently took away the World Trade Center from my neighborhood, murdering thousands in a painful, horrifying, bloody manner, I am passionately angry at them for at least one or two minutes per day.
I’ve been in a state of anticipation. When do we get them, destroy them? Every day, I wait for the intensive retaliation, the destruction of all their mosques, the obliteration of Tehran, the wiping out of all the terrorist training camps and weapons factories in the entire Muslim world. All it takes is some good information and some good bombs. I’m also waiting for every anti-American academic and filmmaker to be arrested for treason, as their words embolden and inspire our enemies to fight us one more day.

I’ve had it. I can only think of one potential president who might do what needs to be done, Rudolph Giuliani. He actually knows and understands the lessons of history. I want to believe we can survive even if he doesn’t run and doesn’t get elected, but it would be difficult to justify such a conclusion. The trouble is, we may not be able to wait till 2009. Our current leaders are unacceptable. They aren’t doing enough, fast enough or furiously enough. We can only depend on the incompetence of our enemies to keep us alive until 2009.

Here are some words that everyone needs to read. Charles Krauthammer’s essay “Today Tehran, Tomorrow the World” is at

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21843

and here is a web site with the important facts to know about the fundamentalist Islamists:

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

Will someone wake up the US government?

Fifty Years Ago and Now
March 31st, 2006

Just to write a lighter post than the one yesterday, here are some happier thoughts.
I enjoy seeing TV and movie stars on 1950s game shows shown late at night on GSN (Game Show Network), and then seeing the same stars, with spirit and verve and personality unchanged, on today’s TV.

For example, (besides their other 1950s programs) Carl Reiner was on The Name’s The Same, Andy Griffith was on I’ve Got A Secret, Betty White was on various game shows in the 1950s and Debbie Reynolds, Carol Burnett, Jane Russell, Paul Anka and Jerry Lewis were on What’s My Line in the 1950s.

In the current decade, mainly in the past year, I’ve seen Betty White on Boston Legal and the Ellen talk show, Carl Reiner on Ellen and The Tonight Show and in Ocean’s 11 (remake), Jane Russell on Larry King, Andy Griffith on Larry King, Jerry Lewis on David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Fox News, and his own telethon, Paul Anka on VH1 and PBS, Carol Burnett in reunion shows with her TV cast, and Debbie Reynolds on David Letterman and other talk shows and documentaries, and in recent movies.

These people have careers spanning more than 50 years. It takes a very special person to achieve that in show business.

And the magic to me is, having not been born yet in the 1950s, those game shows are a time machine. I get to see what life was like in my parents’ time which seemed so very different and more elegant and graceful than my own. Let’s face it, nothing in 1973 looked or felt like how things seemed in 1953 (from the evidence of what has been preserved on film). In contrast, 2006 looks and feels much more similar to 1986 (except for a few great new gadgets). Even looking at my parents’ 1956 wedding films, I can’t comprehend that they lived in that time, the time of Marilyn Monroe and the heyday of Doris Day and Cary Grant, when an effort was still made to make life glamorous, when men wore hats all the time and women wore elaborate dresses or skirts, and everyone flirted, before the hippies and feminists turned us all into unisex blue-jeaned clones.

So hats off to those who have managed to be an important and elevating part of all these different eras in the popular culture. They are very special people.

Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong Il
March 30th, 2006

Warning: this is an upsetting post.

I finally saw “Children of the Secret State” on Discovery Times Channel last night. I’ve seen other documentaries on North Korea and on its refugees, but this one is the sharpest in its evidence of atrocities, including video images by Ahn Chol of starving orphans heroically photographed at the risk of his execution if discovered. Despite North Korea’s claims of a bumper farm crop in 2005, you can be certain there is still starvation in the rural towns, there are still prison camps where entire innocent families are starved, beaten and killed with long knives (because a father or an uncle spoke words that were not permitted to be spoken). You can be sure there are still “hostels” for orphan children where they are given no food and must escape or die.

Kim Jong Il’s late father, Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, learned directly from Stalin. It is inevitable under Communism, or any form of Collectivism, where the Individual is officially subordinate to the State or the Group, that the sacred value of the Individual, his right to his own life, is obliterated and replaced by a total lack of respect for any human life or human right except for the whims of the Dictator. People become a drain on the system in a Collectivist, controlled economy, instead of the source of Plenty (for themselves because they are free to act in their own self-interest) that they are in Capitalism. People become expendable.

The food aid the USA sends to North Korea goes directly to the North Korean military and the government. It doesn’t go to the starving people in the small towns.

If you ever said “Never Again” in regard to the Hitler Holocaust or the Stalin Holocaust, well, it’s been happening again for a long time in North Korea. It’s not a racial group as it was under the Nazis. It’s anyone who could weaken the government’s power — by speaking — that is persecuted, imprisoned, tortured. Where else is it happening again? What do we know about the situations for prisoners of conscience in Iran and Syria? And we do know about the horrors in Sudan and Rwanda thanks to their dictators.

While any free country has the right to attack NK, or any other nation that doesn’t respect the rights of its own people to be free, America needs to be careful not to get entangled if it is not in the interests of its own defense. But NK has declared America to be its enemy, and probably has nuclear weapons. NK will certainly assist groups like Al Queda and states like Iran, by giving them weapons parts and technology, and weapons themselves, if America is the target.

The innocent people of NK can only benefit from a self-defense based (ideally aerial bombing) attack by America on the NK government and its nuclear facilities. Even if the prisoners and other innocent civilians die from American bombs, they will be grateful when they start to hear the bombs drop. I know this from interviewing Nazi concentration camp survivors.

We don’t have to set up the new government, we just have to get rid of the dangerous one. If possible we could try to assist a freedom-loving leader in establishing a constitutionally limited, rights-respecting government (with our know-how, not with our own fighting men). The only necessity to protect the safety and future of America (and our civilized, free allies) is that today’s oppressive NK regime is out of power, and their nuclear weapons are destroyed. Starvation won’t end instantly, and lawlessness may abound for awhile. But our priority needs to be to get rid of a dangerous nuclear-powered enemy first. Action is necessary. Eventually the starvation will end as people become free to work for themselves instead of the “Dear Leader”. That will be an indirect benefit to the innocent North Korean people, if we destroy their government for our own self-defense reasons.

We need not worry about the intense immigration into China and South Korea that may result. There are ways for these nations to absorb them. This should not prevent our taking necessary action.

Needless to say it’s just as necessary for us to also take action against the states that create anti-American terrorists, primarily Iran, but also Syria, and possibly Saudi Arabia. If Iran is obtaining nuclear weaponry, it must be stopped, now.

Another problem I wish to point out is that China keeps sending refugees who escape from North Korea into China, back to be punished by the NK authorities. I recommend that everyone put pressure on China to stop doing this including by writing letters to Chinese representatives and to publications.

Anyway, here are some links:
The program Children of the Secret State:

http://www.hardcashproductions.com/recent02.html

An organization that assists North Korean refugees who have escaped:
http://www.northkoreanrefugees.com/

Another site of interest, including information on a pro-freedom march for NK in Washington, D.C.:
http://www.nkfreedom.org/index.php?id=29http://www.nkfreedom.org/index.php?id=1


Forthcoming Walt Disney World Trip
March 25th, 2006

We’re taking a trip to Walt Disney World in a few weeks. This reminded me of how inspiring it can be to see some of the attractions such as the Hall of Presidents and Carousel of Progress (both originally designed for the New York World’s Fair of 1964, where I first saw them at age 3) and Epcot’s Future World.

However, in recent years some of the attractions were revised to their detriment. The Disney imagineers in the last decade destroyed the serenity and beauty of the lovely Enchanted Tiki Room presentation, which had been a work of art supervised by Walt himself, by adding Gilbert Gottfried and a rabble-rousing element to the show and labelling it “under new management”. I refuse to experience it again until it goes back to the original owners.

But more serious is the damage done to The American Adventure program in Epcot.
By the way, there is an Ayn Rand quotation from “The Fountainhead” on the wall directly opposite the front entrance, don’t miss that if you go. The quotation is, “Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.” It’s part of the same passage that Jerry Lewis (of all people) copied into his little notebook when he read the novel, so he could read it again and again as he pursued his show business career. Sometimes in December they put a Christmas tree in front of it, and I always request that they move the tree so the quotation is visible. But my problem is with the show itself.

As I recall, The American Adventure was quite different when it premiered in 1982. The animatronic portion was shorter and purely patriotic, uplifting, and dealing with principles of freedom as did the opening film.

Then in the 1990s, they added more sequences to the animatronic portion, and changed it into a laundry list of the things that went wrong in American history, including propaganda for “saving” the environment courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt, emphasis on things like the alleged harm done to the Indians, slavery, Prohibition, the Depression, the 20th century persecution of blacks in the South, the Vietnam war protests, to the point where the uplifting emotion about America’s founding principles and its successes, in the opening movie portion (which remained positive and inspiring) and in the original short animatronic program (1982), was to me virtually lost.

It’s almost as if The American Adventure was now the Anti-American Adventure!

Of course, the visual and technical aspects were superb, and were more amazing than in 1982, but the patriotic message became muddled at best.

I haven’t seen it since 2001, so maybe they have changed it again since then. I’ll check it out on my forthcoming trip.

Needless to say, most of Walt Disney World remains a delight and extremely worthwhile. Obviously I have been there many times (I even worked there in 1989) and intend to return many times.

The Objective Standard
March 24th, 2006

I am reading the beautiful print version of the first issue of The Objective Standard and it is outstanding, perhaps worth the price of the whole subscription! It surpasses my expectations. I especially appreciated and will continue to consult (as my children start school) Lisa VanDamme’s article on the hierarchy of knowledge in education.

This is Craig Biddle’s academic journal with an Objectivist viewpoint (http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/). I hope that soon it will be on all the large newsstands and in all the university bookstores, and every Borders and Barnes & Noble store, in the nation (the world?). Craig writes me that one of his goals is that it will be on newsstands within a year.
It is so refreshing to read material by first-rate thinkers. If only everyone knew about this publication — and also The Intellectual Activist (http://www.intellectualactivist.com) and Capitalism Magazine (http://www.capmag.com/) — then many, many people would develop a different, more accurate perspective than they have now under the influence of today’s typically missing-the-point periodicals and broadcast programs.