Halfway Funeral (1 Viewer)

[MULLINAX]

Just came back from a funeral ceremony and there was nothing halfway about it. Acres of flowers and candles with a big photo in the middle.

2 Buddhist monks intoned Sutras, incense, bowing. Nothing funny or absurd here, unlike somebody else's funeral. No one posed for 'photo opportunities'. Coffin did not 'almost slip away'. No jokes. Penn did not attend. Was the only White Boy there. Skipped the wake and am now drinking Lady Grey tea with milk and smoking my very non-P.C. ivory-stemmed pipe, which I cleaned using a mammoth-tusk pipe cleaner.

Should I go to the track tomorrow? Maybe I'll meet a "high-yellow"?

 

[Father Luke]

ever see lost in translation?

 

[Gerard K H Love]

Yes, I saw that movie- I still don't get it, and I own the DVD. I don't get Mullinax here either. What can be that intoxicating about Lady Grey tea? Oh! It must be what's in the pipe. :confused:

 

[Father Luke]

Lost in translation was great.

Try it like this:
What would Bill Murry have been like if he wasn't famous?

Then look at the movie like that.

I dug it.

 

[Gerard K H Love]

We might need a Bill Murray thread. I will do as you request, as a fellow cub scout. Mullinax may be living that movie right now. He is in Japan, now, isn't he?

 

[MULLINAX]

LOST IN TRANSLATION bored me to tears, maybe because I live here and the cliches were old hat and no longer applicable. That scene in the elevator where Murray is a head taller than everyone else, fer instance. Look closely, all these Emperor-worshipping midgets are at least 70 years old. Their grandkids are much taller now. The doctor who can't speak English? Very unlikely. Most docs here study abroad for three years.

I also couldn't build up any empathy for a millionaire actor being paid a million bucks to do one commercial. It doesn't matter how depressed he is, HE IS THE ESTABLISHMENT.

The female lead however, on the basis of her pulchritude alone, salvages the film. That may be a shallow thing to say, but that's the way it is.

I smoke cigars in the hotel that the film presumably takes place in. You can't smoke in the cigar store - no chairs! so I make do with a seat in the lobby cafe.

Maybe that's why I dislike the movie.

And an Academy Award to Sofia? More women deserve recognition, but the quintessential "Valley Girl"?

Now then, where did I put my PUFFY DVD?

 

[Father Luke]

LOST IN TRANSLATION bored me to tears, maybe because I live here and the cliches were old hat and no longer applicable. That scene in the elevator where Murray is a head taller than everyone else, fer instance. Look closely, all these Emperor-worshipping midgets are at least 70 years old. Their grandkids are much taller now.

Actually, no. I'm looking at the scene in the elevator, and most
of the people are in their early thirties or twenties. There is even a little kid.

I can appreciate you had a different view of the film.
Kind of why I asked, actually.

- -
Cheers,
Father Luke

 

[MULLINAX]

Could he have taken the elevator more than once?

 

[Gerard K H Love]

Thank you to Father Luke, you are always right there with the proof.
Mullinax you are very fortunate to be in Japan right now. I lived in Japan in the late 50s and I want to go back. The story about the halfway funeral, why halfway?

 

[MULLINAX]

Gerard K H Love: Buk writes about "Betty's" funeral (Post Office?) and how the priest wouldn't give her full rites because there was some doubt as to whether she was 'a true Catholic', so he gave her a 'halfway funeral'. It's a hilarious and sad account at the same time. You'll burst out laughing when he makes a little wordplay with 'halfway'.

Living here in the Far East is ok, but my lifestyle is essentially the same no matter where I go or what I do. In other words, I live the life of a self-supporting American Jackass doing his best to uphold the glorious legacies of Charles Bukowski and Fred Flintstone.

Father Luke: That's a humdinger of a way to buttress your argument. Ya got me. I'll look at the film again someday, not to find evidence for my contentions, but to see if I can appreciate it more the second time around.

 

[Father Luke]

Clichés were first not clichés;
what's closest to the heart is the most general.

Let me know if the film shows
differently for you the second time around.

I'll read about Betty's funeral.

- -
Mazel Tov,
Father Luke

 

[Gerard K H Love]

Wow! I can feel the love and the bond.
I am in over my head. Thank you for explaining I will read that again as well. I like the Fred Flinstone refrence. Did you happed to read Father Luke's account of his encounter with Betty and Wilma? There's nothing halfway about that, sorry Fred.

 

[MULLINAX]

I looked at FL's site once or twice and I must have missed the Wilma and Betty thing. I'm glad I'm not alone in my appreciation of a real American archetype. The Flintstone ethos is more than just YABBA-DABBA-DOO! It's (to me anyway) all about accepting one's self and being happy at the end of the day with what you have. Fred has always got some hare-brained "get rich quick" scheme going that inevitably falls apart. He is, like most of us, not made for 'the big time', so accepting one's limitations, as Freddy does, at the end of each episode, and usually in Wilma's arms, is what truly allows us to pursue happiness.

 

[mjp]

Everything you like about the Flintstones is there in the show that the Flintstones is based on, The Honeymooners. I loved the 'stones as a kid, but Ralph and Alice Kramden are even even more broad and funny characters than Fred and Wilma.

 

[non compos mentis]

"One of these days!" The Honeymooners is the greatest. Loved that show. All the ups and downs of the human tragedy played out as a comedy which everyone relates to and doesn't feel so alone in their misery anymore.

 

[MULLINAX]

Yep. Jackie Gleason of the Honeymooners decided not to sue Hanna-Barbera because he didn't want America's children mad at him.

Don't know what Buk thought about Fred and Barney, but he sneered at Lucy and Desi as a bunch of grasping, neurotic idiots who desperately lunged for an elusive American dream of crass consumption. I imagine Buk would have derided Fred's 'wage slavery' down at the Slate Rock and Gravel Quarry, but I like to think of them as linked by failure.

And it was good to mention the Honeymooner's because Harrison, in his EXCURSUS GLEASON, breaks down for us the elements in Buk's comic dialogues.

 

[Father Luke]

Harrison, in his EXCURSUS GLEASON, breaks down for us the elements in Buk's comic dialogues.

koff

click

 

[MULLINAX]

Thanks. Fast work.

It's noon here and I'm still I my pyjamas. I'm looking forward to having a good dump, and then some tea and bread.

 

[Father Luke]

poor guys don't take good dumps.
they can't. they don't eat enough to sponsor a fart.

have a nice day.

 

[1fsh2fsh]

"if shit were worth money poor people would be born without ass holes"........ ( old portegese(?) folk saying)

"about the only lout I could stand was Jackie Gleason_ at his best he showed some showmanship, at his worst he was like the rest" Pg. 254 SCREAMS FROM THE BALCONY letter to Steve Richmond...

 

[bogthing]

If you're a "boy" then you shouldn't be drinking caffeine and smoking tobacco. I know a high yellow that can really skin the cat. You like big girls?

 

[Gerard K H Love]

How much is the green teain china? Not just the tea.

Hello,:confused: where are you?