By Restless
“The treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country.”  - Winston Churchill
The United States currently incarcerates 738 people per 100,000 of population.  Europe’s average is 200 (The United Kingdom is 145).  Only Russia comes close at 603 per 100,000.
The U.S. is the only Democracy […]

 
By Restless
In December I watched the new Coen Brothers film, No Country For Old Men, which has gone on to win the Academy award for Best Picture.  It is a tragedy, a work of unremitting violence.
As I left the multiplex, I thought: What are these guys saying here?
I mean, the Coens, the actors (Josh Brolin, […]

By Restless

1. The Century of the Self (2002) Pt. 3
At the end of the 50s, Anna Freud’s psychoanalytic methods were being challenged by those alienated by businesses’ use of them to sell products and also by a growing awareness of several major failures: Dr. Cameron’s experimental treatments using drugs and shock had failed, and the […]

  By Restless
My abject apologies. Right in the middle of writing and publishing the series on the 4 Fantastic Films, my laptop punked out.
My tech skills are pretty rusty, and it was the day after Thanksgiving. I immediately thought: has to be the hard drive. Quick get on craigslist, 2 hours later a meeting at a […]

1. The Century of the Self (2002) – Pt. 2By Restless
In 1929, the stock market crashed and people simply stopped buying anything they didn’t need. Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, saw the power and influence he had amassed during the 20s whither as business and government lost control of the people, now rioting against the […]

 By Restless
months ago, the best aggregator of full-length video, jonhs.net – see my article of March 5th — changed urls, now moviesfoundonline.com. Youtube and other sites are great for short vidclips; this site is the best repository for the longer stuff.
Want standup — Pablo Francisco, Dane Cook, Carlos Mencia, Bill Hicks, Dave Chappell, Andy Kaufman, […]

 By Restless
Two and a half years after planes were flown into the Twin Towers, I moved to New York City. I’d been thinking about living in New York City for like 30 years, yet there had always been something daunting about it – cold, distant, big, tough. Shy and easily crowd-shocked, close to my dysfunctional […]

 By Restless
Earlier this year, I wrote about the mysterious death of bees this past year. Given the name colony collapse disorder to reflect the potentially catastrophic decimation of honeybee colonies in the US and Europe, a German study pointed to waves from cell phone transmittal stations as probable cause.
Not true. The real reasons for colony […]

By Restless 
Midnight in a Greyhound depot underneath one of Pittsburgh’s many bridges. The harshly lit rectangle of a room was packed. Amish, black, latin, whites. One of my bus mates from New York, a short, fat guy, sat down at the table next to what passed for a café. Based in Arkansas, he delivered school […]

By Restless
The weekend’s mail brought 2 of the new action films from Asian director Johnnie To. I watched Fulltime Killer (2001) first. Set in Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong and Thailand the dialog is in Cantonese, Japanese and English with a little Korean thrown in for good measure. It’s the story of 2 dueling contract killers, […]

By Restless 
I left New York Thursday before Labor Day weekend. Tried Amtrak, which goes NYC, Cleveland, Chicago, then down to Albuquerque and over, ending in L.A. Sold out, try tomorrow.
Cabbed from Penn Station over to the Port Authority, where Greyhound always runs, always has space. During the 3-hour wait for departure, I stumbled into the […]

By Restless
The first day of fall and my summer vacation from blogs and all news is now over — and so is my life in New York. As it turned out, my summer vacation was really the end of the end.
My last post was of a panorama. I started a plog the other day and […]

By Restless
Roosevelt Island, East River, July 1st 9am, 90°
(click for bigger)
3 weeks into the Summer and No Paris, no Bush, No Iraq. Just heat, humidity, rain and attitude here in the City. That and thousands of dogs, thousands of kids (neo-BabyBoom?), thousands of girls in summer party dresses parading in packs every night. Oy vey.

By Restless
Today is the first day of Summer. For the past few weeks I’ve been working long hours and fielding auditions and freelance deal. Today I read 39 Ways to Live, not Merely Exist at dumb little man. Some excerpts:

Love. Perhaps the most important. Fall in love, if you aren’t already.
Get outside. Don’t let yourself […]