VICE, MARY and CLINT

I went to 2.2 films, and they came in #2, #5 and #6 at the weekend box office.  It all began with #6, Vice, which was all about Dick Cheney.  Rotten Tomatoes did not particularly like it:  64%/56%.  I did, mostly because I identified with the politics and people.  

When I worked for the U.S. Senate from 1979 to 1982, Cheney was a brand new Congressman.  We were just about the same age.  I recall him as being imperialistic.  However, in this mix was Scooter Libby, who later went on to serve as chief of staff for Cheney when he became Vice President.  This is where the title came for my first movie yesterday.

I've met only a couple of people in my life who had the ability to correctly finish a sentence I started.  He was uncommonly sharp, but friendly.  Scooter was one of those in the 1980's who helped me get the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR) started.

In 2007 he took the blame for the CIA leak ordered by Cheney and was the highest White House official at that time to get convicted.  President Donald Trump fully pardoned him earlier this year.  

Which reminds me of another individual who was crucial in getting funding for PICHTR, John Poindexter, whose grandfather Joseph was Governor of Hawaii, the one who received the call from President Franklin Roosevelt regarding 7December1941.  John was convicted in 1990 for the Iran-Contra coverup, releasing President Ronald Reagan from responsibility.  However, the charges got reversed the following year.  Poindexter graduated at the top of his Annapolis class in 1958, the year I graduated from high school.

But back to Vice, very difficult to imagine someone like Christian Bale playing Dick Cheney.  Bale dropped his weight to 120 pounds for The Machinist in 2014, and reached 228 pounds for this role.

The transformation was stunning.  Okay, who is the real Dick Cheney?

Steve Carell did an okay Donald Rumsfeld and Sam Rockwell kind of looked like and sounded sufficiently close to George W. Bush.  

Noticed that Brad Pitt and Will Ferrell were among the producers.  I bet Ferrell wanted to play Bush the Younger.  Remember those SNL sequences?  Ferrell also had a one-man play as George Bush.  

Dick Cheney's approval rating as VP when he left office was down to 13%.  Plus, he didn't cooperate with the film makers.  You can imagine how kind they were to him.

I then went to a second movie, Mary Poppins Returns.  I began to worry when I saw a good number of children in the audience.  Then, all the film previews were animated or otherwise Disney productions. Rotten Tomatoes bestowed 78%/68% ratings.  Mary Poppins returns as Emily Blunt, who was born in London, and is known for roles in Sicario, The Girl on the Train and A Quiet Place, the latter co-starring with her husband John Krasinski.

I was curious why Lin-Manuel Miranda was playing the Dick Van Dyke role.  Miranda is now really famous with his Hamilton production, but he was born in New York and has Puerto Rican roots.  No problem, he can speak like a Britisher, and even sing.  Come to think of it, Van Dyke also was American, and he makes a surprise showing.

The cast also had Angela Lansbury, Colin Firth and Meryl Streep.  While the songs were original, there was a stanza of A Spoonful of Sugar.  And I can still say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.  For the record, the original in 1964 got 100%/86% ratings, while the new one only 78%/69%.

Well, to make a long story short, after about 25 minutes I had to go to the bathroom and on the way back to my seat bought a giant hot dog.  The next door auditorium was playing The Mule, and was just starting.  Heck, I payed for two films, so I abandoned Mary Poppins for Clint Eastwood, who directed, produced and starred.  Rotten Tomatoes gave it 64%/67%.  The cast included Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Diane Wiest and Andy Garcia.  I also thoroughly enjoyed my less than healthy meal and no doubt this film over the other.

The RT scores were about right.  Just an acceptable movie which says be closer to your family if you want a fulfilling life.  Eastwood's character mostly had fun and some success in his first 90 years, but in ignorance of his family, then lost his farm and home.  So he almost accidentally became a 90-year old drug mule for the Sinaloa Cartel, donating a lot of his earnings to good causes.  Sure, he gets arrested, but that leads to re-gaining a measure of acceptance by his wife, daughter and granddaughter.  

The only film to soon open with high Rotten Tomatoes ratings is Stan and Ollie.  Got 89% from reviewers and 91% from audiences.  Don't know who they are?  Well, they first became popular 90 years ago.

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THE NEW BIBLE

A couple of times in my life I actually tried to read The Holy Bible.  I did not get past the first few pages.  Amazon sells this hardcover for $2.16, while the Kindle version is $1.99 and the audiobook is free.

The December issue of National Geographic features how The Bible took shape.  What an enormous undertaking.  NG does it with incredible graphics and in only a few pages lays out what happened, when and by whom.  Did you know Adam and Eve came around 4000 BC; Noah 3000 BC, and died a thousand years later; Moses passed away in 1451 BC; David defeated Goliath in 1063 BC; then came The New Testament, with the birth of Jesus a few years before the year zero.

The above image is only a fraction of the information presented.

According to Wikipedia:

Church attendance in advanced industrial societies is in gradual general decline with people shifting from weekly to monthly or holiday attendance. Sociologists have attributed this trend to a number of reasons, starting from a simple boredom during services and lack of motivation, to generational incompatibility of belief systems and social changes attributed to modernity.^[68] 

Nearly a decade ago I advocated a Golden Evolution to take Humanity to the next stage of societal development.  In that chapter I suggested how Christianity could have begun:

So, therefore, place yourself back to circa 50 AD. Nothing much can be found about Jesus. Conflicting descriptions can be unearthed about this individual, but absent any miracles and the connection with Son of God. Is it possible that a group, say, the Antioch Jesus Movement, sees an opportunity to spur something called Christianity? 

So they pick a mortal of those days who might just fit a concept called the Messiah. They borrow selectively from early Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Mexican (nah, scratch this, Columbus came 1500 years later) and Greek writings to create the legend of Jesus Christ around a real-life martyr. He was in his prime at the age of 30, so they choose 30 AD as the founding of Christianity. Could this incredible PR ploy have started it all? Did all this lead to the Catholic Church of today!

They did well, for Christianity is today the #1 religion.  Let me, then, start with Christianity, for the solution to its future is a better Bible, for the present one is obsolete.  To quote:

Little wonder then that the French philosopher Voltaire said that in a hundred years from his day the Bible would have passed into the mists of history as people became more liberated and enlightened.

That was three centuries ago, and he was wrong, for 2.2 billion people still seem to adhere to the tenets.

Who wrote the first Bible?  There must be a million books out there, so I'm grossly oversimplifying, but some say St. Jerome around 400 AD assembled the 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament into Latin.  It is referred to as The Vulgate.  He no doubt was influenced by the 325AD Council of Nicea convened by Roman Emperor Constantine and the First Council of Constantinople in 381AD.

The Bible has been translated into 2100 languages, but much of the substance was retained.  More than four hundred years ago King James I sponsored what became known as the English King James  Bible.  In those days, there were only 25 letters in the alphabet, absent a "J", so the correct term is King Iames Bible, and Jesus Christ came through as Ieusus Chrift.

More than 5 billion copies of The Bible have been published and 100 million are printed annually.  There are 80,000 different versions of The Bible. The week after 9/11, Bible sales jumped by 40%.  More than 3 billion copies of The Koran exist.  Apps, however, are taking over. 

Is there a serious movement to update The Bible?  The Vatican began the process in 2001.  Don't hold your breath for anything revolutionary.  Biblical scholars, of course, continually search ancient texts to adjust mistakes that have crept in over the past two millennia.  I'll some day I'll find exactly how many biblical scholars are active today, and who funds them.  For now, this is what Wikipedia says:

Category:Biblical scholars - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Biblical_scholars

This category may require frequent maintenance to avoid becoming too large. It should directly contain very few, if any, pages and should mainly contain ...

Thus, what I'm suggesting is blasphemous and, maybe even original.  I have a simple solution for bringing The Bible up to date.  I'm just making this up as I'm writing this posting, but it seems to me that "someone" should establish a web site to produce THE NEW BIBLE.  Copy what Jimmy Wales did in starting Wikipedia, which now is approaching 6 million articles, about the equivalent of 2,500 print volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  When you include all languages, there are almost 50 million articles.

Of course, the whole point to The New Bible is not to have it grow into some kind of uncontrolled monster.  Some progressive religious organization, not unlike the Antioch Jesus Movement mentioned above, or maybe The Vatican, should organize this web site, set the initial format and establish an editorial crew.  Wikipedia, for example, has 70,000 editors to maintain accuracy and style.  Anyone can contribute, and over time, The New Bible will grow to about ten times the size of The Bible, and be continually updated with the latest compellingly validated information.  I suspect that something like the Exodus and parting of the Red Sea will someday look totally different, with more accurate dates and scientifically based explanation of miracles, such as I suggested in my SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity.

For example, to largely replace the first few sentences:

Genesis

---

Gen.1

[1] In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
[2] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
[3] And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
[4] And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

The New Bible will simply say:

[1] In the beginning, there was a Big Bang.
[2] .....

Rather than ten times longer than The Holy Bible, maybe The New Bible will be ten times shorter with links, and graphics, best accessed on a computer or smart phone.

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HOLIDAY CUISINE IN PURGATORY

This has been a particularly exceptional holiday period, so far, for food with friends.  But I will begin with this morning, when I got out of bed at 9:30AM and ten hours of sleep.  I seek 10 hours once/month, and succeed, maybe, four times annually.

For Christmas Eve dinner at 15 Craigside I was invited to join the table of Charlotte and Al Matsuda, with their daughter Lynn, husband, Doug, and children Halle and Kyle:

I traditionally bring my most expensive Stanford alumni wine to this table, and this year it was a Collector's Reserve Lyndenhurst by Spottswoode 2014 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, which just arrived this month.  Those other bottles are dark chocolate with a hint of liquors like Remy Martin, etc.

The next day, I had my annual Christmas dinner at the Lees.  Leona kindly picks me up and takes me back home, for I know I will have a couple of drinks or more.  Harvey to the right and Betsy with son Patrick:

Yesterday, my neighbor John Aoki and I went golfing at the Ala Wai Golf Course.  It was raining with thunder and lightning, so I quit after the sixth hole, but John went on with two others and played his best ever golf, with a birdie and four pars.  On the way home we bought some Japanese wagyu beef and o-toro for sashimi.  Marilyn and Wil joined us for an incredibly fabulous meal.

I brought two bottles of Stanford reds, for I was not sure if the 2003 Hans Fahden Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon would be drinkable.  This potion turned out to be perfectly aged, and one of the very best wines I ever had the pleasure to drink.

Still to come, New Year's Eve Dinner followed by poker to Midnight and later:

Then for my first meal on January 1, O-zoni, which this year will feature scallops, abalone, hokigai, lotus root, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, mochi, mustard cabbage, won bok and more.  I also will grill a small piece of Japanese Wagyu Beef from Miyazaki, and craft some O-toro Blue Fin Tuna sashimi, with libations I haven't yet quite identified.

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THE MOST AMAZING STORY OF 2018: Rescue of the 12 Wild Boars and coach in Thailand

The most amazing story of 2018 is the rescue of 12 members and assistant coach of the Wild Boars soccer team in Thailand.  No amount of prose can replace the magic of reality.  Seventeen days of imminent tragedy that captured the imagination of humanity.  Click on Thai Cave Rescue, a 53m 34s NOVA special on PBS.  But you need to be a member.

On June 23 this past summer, twelve members of this group from Chiang Rai Province, Thailand, ages 11 to 17, with their 25-year old assistant coach, Ekkapol Ake Chantawong, entered Tham Luang Nang Non cave.  This was nothing new to them, and because of something to do with initiation rites, they wanted to explore deeper to write their names on the wall.  Hmmm....  There was a warning sign, but the danger period was from July to November.  Unfortunately, heavy rain fell, trapping them inside.

Head coach Nopparat Khanthawong happened to check his phone at 7PM and found twenty missed calls from parents of his team.  With help from another assistant coach, they found one team member who had not gone on this outing, and he mentioned that the others went to that cave.  Bicycles and bags were found at the entrance.  

Luckily, a British caver, Vern Unsworth, who lived in Chiang Rai and knew the cave well was scheduled to make a solo venture on June 24.  He was contacted, and advised the Thai government to request assistance from the British Cave Rescue Council. That set in motion a process where Thai Navy SEAL divers arrived on the 25th, followed, over time by 10,000 people, including over 100 divers from 100 governmental agencies, 900 police officers, 2,000 soldiers, ten police helicopters, seven police ambulances and 700 diving cylinders.  Classmates made a thousand cranes and prayed for their safe return.  Rescuers came from Thailand, Australia, United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, India, Israel, Japan, Laos, Netherlands, Russia Germany, Myanmar, the Phillipines, Singapore, Spain, Sweden France and the USA.  Elon Musk offered to design kid-sized submarines, and there was an embarrassing flap between Unsworth and Musk.

Conditions were nearly impossible, but here was an example of the world working together for a common cause and succeeding, for ten days later, on July 2, the boys were found, 2.5 miles from the mouth of the cave and half a mile from the surface.  They were malnourished, but coach Ake was once a Buddhist monk, and was able to teach the boys to meditate, which could well have been why they survived, and, apparently, without long-term psychological problems.

But the relief of finding them alive was overwhelmed by the task to bring them out.  Experienced divers took six hours against the current to get there from the entrance.  Many of the boys could not swim.  

One worry was that the oxygen level was dropping, and was down to 15% by July 6, where normal functioning begins to drop at 19.5% oxygen.  They could not find a way to pump oxygen into that space, and more rain was coming, for the monsoon season had begun, and could have lasted into November.  One of the rescuers, a former SEAL, died in the attempt on that day.  

Drilling down to the location was difficult and there was no other way out.  Thus a decision was made to sedate the boys, place them in a wet suit with full face mask, and bring each out linked to professional divers from July 8.  Here is a 2-hour CBS report for that day.  They were supported by 90 divers from throughout the world at various points from the trapped site to entrance, with drag stretchers in a daisy chain.

It took three days, with the coach as the last person.  They lost an average of 4.4 pounds, but, save for some pneumonia, they were in good condition.  They were all only fed rice porridge for ten days.

Coach Ek apologized, but no parent or governmental official blamed him for the ordeal.  In fact, he is considered to be a hero.

While the team was invited to the World Cup final, their hospitalization period made this impossible.  Three of the members and the coach Ek were stateless, but all four were granted Thai citizenship.    The British Cave Rescue team were given the Pride O Britain 2018 award and the 12 members from Thailand attended the ceremony in London.  Also amazingly, there appears to be no negative mental effects.  No nightmares.  They all seem to be normal.  The cave is now a living museum.  

Of course there will be a film, or two, and one is already called The Cave, by Thai-Irish filmaker Tom Waller, using as many of the rescuers as possible.

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REGULAR FOOD IN PURGATORY

After today, there are four days left in 2018.  I will feature:

• The most amazing story of the year.
• The New Bible.
• Grumble all you want, but we are today living better than ever before.
• Fabulous foods to end the year.

Today, I'll clear my desktop by featuring just regular food in Purgatory.  That announcement to the right of the 15 Craigside Christmas Dinner I place in the ho-hum category because it was lacking in anything particularly memorable, save for the company and wine.

Hopefully our Happy New Year Eve Dinner will be better.  What is regular food?  Most of us consume three meals a day.  I pay for 90 meals/month at 15 Craigside, but have maybe 25/month in the dining room.  A seeming waste of money, especially as the food here is actually okay:

Anyway, to end the year I'm clearing my desktop of these food photos.  However, I'll start with some Christmas trees, beginning with one from the 12th floor of 15 Craigside.  Every floor has its own, and you can double that number when you include the entire building.

The second shot was taken at Honolulu City Hall, while the one just above is in the 15 Craigside lobby, with the Royal Hawaiian Band providing entertainment.

Liliha Bakery:  fried rice with eggs and Vienna Sausage.  That buttered bread is their specialty.  In case you were wondering, Vienna sausages do not come from Vienna.  With European origins, they became synonymous with short and canned pork sausages, reaching a consumption peak half a century ago in the USA.  However, in Hawaii, they are still widely consumed.  Add Spam to our diet.

Mitsuken garlic chicken at Fishing Village, above left.

Italian wedding soup and Caesar salad lunch at Buca di Beppo.

Udon, miso soup and ikura over rice at Aki's.

Shanghai dumplings or Xiaolongbao from Taipan in the Chinese Cultural Plalza.  While associated with Shanghai and Wuxi, Dai Tai Fung, a chain from Taiwan, has made this dish popular in the USA.  This restaurant is also prominent in Shanghai.

Below some healthy looking koi next to my seat in Taipan.  They were decorative and not being shown for you to pick out for your lunch. 

A spaghetti and meatballs dinner on my lanai at sunset.  The ingredients were taken out from the 15C dining room.  I enhanced it by first frying in olive oil five cloves of sliced garlic, adding the broccoli and tomato from my take-out salad (which was topped with truffle oil and balsamic vinegar), then the Bolognese sauce.  I lightly heated the spaghetti in butter, and the meal was accompanied with a bottle of beer and my first tasting of the recently received Stanford Governor's Selection Cabernet from Dry Creek Valley.

The 12 floor of 15C has an annual Christmas Party, where I served as the Bingo announcer for impressive gifts.   My lunch plate to the left.  We also had blue champagne.

Here are my neighbors to the right.  We are in the 15C Solarium, where the poker gang plays, as we will through midnight on New Year's Eve.  We hope to soon feature fine dining here.

Tomorrow the full story of how the world came together to rescue the Wild Boars soccer team in Thailand.

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