Today's Hartford Courant's North East Magazine section (Sunday, 11/27/05), columnist Colin McEnroe sited the 1976 movie "Network". http://www.courant.com/news/local/northeast/hc-colin1127.artnov27,0,59 73301.column?coll=hc-northeast-top

Every now and then it pops into my head that the movie actually predicted what television was going to (and has) turn(ed) into: a sort of circus of wackiness where pretty much everything (and anything) is done for ratings.

He quoted Howard Beale, the character played by Peter Finch. The character had a nervous breakdown on the air and said, "get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, `I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' " Anybody remember that?

He quotes more of the Beale spiel, "It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, `Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad!"

I guess that you could add home computers, Ipods, and video games to the "let me have's". But it seems like that's essentially what's going on with the American public in general these days. Sure, we respond when something really nasty happens for a few weeks or so, but then our ADD kicks in and it's back to our fortresses of solitude. Don't care what happens, just leave me alone! Nobody's getting "mad"!

Kurt Vonnegut Jr was on PBS' "Now" a few weeks ago and related a story about buying an envelope. He told his wife that he was going out to buy one. She suggested that he go online, order 100 of 'em, and then he wouldn't have to bother going out for "an envelope". He pretended not to hear her and went out anyway. And on his way to the envelope purchase, he said that he saw two pretty girls, a fire truck whose firemen waved a hearty hello to him, and ran into an assortment of interesting people.

What's my point here? Not really sure. Maybe this: Get out! Get mad! Do something besides curling up into a ball! Not anybody in particular, mind you. Just everybody in general.

Rantingly,
Capt'n Zap

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by Captain Zap on Nov 27, 2005 ---</FONT></center>

It is definitely important to get out and see people. It had been so long since I had been out when I wnet to see Pete and Arlo, I had pretty much forgotten how to sing.

Off to see Hot Tuna at the Bardavon. Nobody plays bass like Jack!

kurt...

tingaling!