Word up is that he was going through heavy depression. The planet lost a genius today.
Tuesday Robin Williams UPDATE: All news media was just plastered wall to wall with this news today, and I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know by now. I just have to add that I'm surprised that the world of actors is surprised because the more convincing (great) an actor is, the greater is his ability for deception. Feel deceived, do you? It was great acting. A lot of people who are not actors are great actors, and that's the world of fraud, of con men. Put an actor on trial and the jury will get fed deception. Ain't that right, O. J. Simpson?
I would imagine that superlative actors find themselves believing that they are actually this other person that they're portraying, so you'll find some deceiving of self in the process. Maybe Robin Williams had had enough of lying to himself, and believing his own lies. I imagine that no one can convince himself that he's somebody else without a high level of self deception.
3 children, 3 different wives. Odds are better than average that somebody was lying to somebody, big time.
Yeah, I'm just one of the millions in the audience, no expert on acting as a profession, but I do know what I see. Je vous connais, milord, vous n'm'avez jamais vue--Je n'suis qu'une fille du port, une ombre de la rue. (Edith Piaf)
C'est la vie.
Lauren Bacall, on the other hand, died today of a more natural death. Also Arlene Martel, of the old Star Trek. She portrayed Spock's wife.
I usually post updates on an existing post when I don't have much for another blog entry, but I make exceptions for important topics. Recent developments in Gaza prompts this separate entry, intended for those of my audience who value history. It is similar to a post I made about Syria much earlier, and about the same issue:
You can't conduct productive archaeology on a site that has been bombed to smithereens. I repeat this because Ashkalon has been bombed multiple times and it's a prized archaeological site. Just a few minutes ago I heard that a Gaza mosque has been bombed now, bringing to mind the risk of destruction now facing the very antique Al Aqsa Mosque, a mosque that dates back to Mohammed's own century, built by Calif Omar under the Treaty of Medina. Rabid Zionist Israelis have wanted to destroy that mosque for a long, long, time, claiming that it sits atop a Jewish temple.
The antiquities of Iraq come under similar threat via ISIS as well as any bombs that might be dropped to counter them. In destroying each other we destroy records of our history for future generations, if there are to be any of us left in the future.
Note to historians--it's over issues like this where you go wrong in insisting on reading the latest books on an historic topic of interest: while stuff might have been recently discovered, a lot of stuff is just as likely to be lost to current investigation. Old books and periodicals are just as valuable in that they contain information on that which hadn't been destroyed yet by the date of their copyright.
The horrendous loss of life alone is a given, but it's also obvious that such human costs aren't of value to the combatants, clearly. The whole thing is a tragedy, no doubt about it, but that just doesn't stop some people.
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| That machine did kill fascists. |
Late Sunday UPDATE: Marc Ginsberg on CSPAN
By and large this man sounds sensible but he hit a few snags in spots. The one that prompts me to write this post-script is his complaint about the U.S. backing out of what he claimed was a "red line" drawn on the Assad regime in Syria...which he complained about after talking about ISIS without realizing that going forward with any sort of consequences in Syria to punish Assad would result in handing ISIS a victory. Dummkopf.
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