Category: Beauty

Was Donald Trump Good at Baseball?

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“The president has long claimed he could have gone pro. We looked into it.”

Was Trump good enough to play pro baseball? I don’t know, and the article suggests he was nowhere near that level, but I have to give the devil his due. He was a jock, good at almost every sport. He only played one varsity sport at Fordham (squash), but he was a playground legend, and every intramural team tried to recruit him in just about every sport. He didn’t play much because he was a commuter. The day-hops spent way too much of their lives going back and forth, so most of the intramural athletes were students who lived in the dorms or in off-campus apartments, but when Trump hung out and played, he was said to be tremendous, and he was reputed to be a superlative golfer. His high school records support that. At various times, he played football, baseball, basketball, soccer, bowling and wrestling. He made the varsity in baseball, football and soccer. He was a real jock.


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The Top 20 Nude Scenes of 1998

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Here are the ordered results of the balloting, complete with links to film clips.

(If you are a member, you don’t need to get the film clips from those storage locker sites. They are in the members’ page along with more than 50,000 others. Aesthete alone has done more than 5,000 film clips, and Defoe about 3,400!)

Although it takes me a long time to assemble the choices, create the thumbnails, create the poll page, create the film clips and assemble the results page, I have to say that it was fun to look back on 1998. I really enjoyed recalling some of those great scenes and seeing how you evaluated them. I usually have a lot of reservations about the results of our “real time” polls, but I felt that this one came out almost exactly the way I would have done it personally. (Although one commenter reminded me that Dangerous Beauty probably placed far too low. Fair point. I would not have placed it second, as he suggested, but probably would have pegged it for the #6 slot.)

Given that it seemed to be a pleasant experience for all of us, I’ll trudge along on 1997 as soon as I muster sufficient ambition.

Original Sin

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Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas performed arguably the hottest scene ever filmed between A-list actors (which they both were at the time).

I have some thoughts about the movie. Complete spoilers follow:

I think I’m going to surprise you with what I am about to say. I’m the guy who asked why the hell Blake Edwards thought it was a wise idea to remake a Truffaut movie as a Burt Reynolds film (The Man Who Loved Women). You would therefore expect me to hate the entire idea of this lavish Hollywood remake of yet another Truffaut movie (Mississippi Mermaid), but I don’t feel that way. Mississippi Mermaid was not an exceptionally good Truffaut movie. Although the idea had merit, it was filled with inexplicable behavior and illogical plot twists. I think it was a good idea to remake it.

Before you unload on me and my obvious lack of taste, let me set the record straight. I am not telling you that Original Sin is a great movie, and I’m not recommending it. The fact that I don’t object to a remake doesn’t mean I endorse this particular execution of that idea, although I think it is a reasonable screen representation of the kind of plot and atmosphere represented by Cornell Woolrich’s “Waltz into Darkness,” the novel which formed the basis for both Truffaut’s film and this one.

The basic summary: a mail order bride shows up on an island. She’s not at all what the groom expected. He was waiting at the docks for a plain woman, and was confronted with a knock-out. Her story, “I didn’t want you to send for me because I had a pretty face. I sent a picture of my ugly cousin.” He believed it, because he had done something very similar himself. He told her that he was a simple worker when in fact he owned the factory/plantation, because he didn’t want her to come because she had seen a pretty bank account. Believing her, however, was a big mistake. She was a con artist who has conspired with her boyfriend to murder the real mail order bride and clean out the groom.

Frankly, Truffaut’s film had a serious problem with inexplicable character motives. When the con woman cleaned out the rich guy’s bank accounts, there was no motivation for her to do that. She was trading down. What kind of con is that? She had the greatest life imaginable with a rich guy with impeccable manners who looked like a movie star and completely adored her. She would have been far better off telling him the truth and staying with him rather than cleaning out a couple of bank accounts and ending up right back where she was again in a couple of years. The only possible explanation for her actions is that her unseen partner-in-crime had an inexplicably strong hold on her, something that she just couldn’t break. But the Truffaut movie never explained that.

The remake tried and succeeded fairly well in that one aspect. The partners had a bizarre sadistic/masochistic co-dependency relationship that dated back to childhood. That alone could explain how he controlled her, but the screenwriter added a further clarification as well. The con woman WAS going to stay with the rich guy, until he made her write a letter to “her sister” – actually the murdered woman’s sister – which forced her to end the game.

Unfortunately, both versions of the story have a massive logic error. In theory, the con woman and her partner killed the real mail order bride on the ship. They flung her overboard and concocted a scheme to impersonate her. Do you see the big problem with this set-up?

The mail order bride didn’t know she was going to marry a rich man! She thought she was going to the island to marry a mere foreman for love.

So why would anyone decide to bump her off and take her place? To con a poor man? Conning the poor has never been an especially lucrative enterprise.

(Well, to be more precise, conning a single poor person has never been very rewarding. On the other hand, if you choose to do it en masse, as do the TV evangelists, it seems to be pretty fruitful.)

This newer version of the story pretty much follows the Truffaut film for 75 minutes – until the bride is rediscovered by the rich man after her flight, at which point he intends to kill her, but is dissuaded by the story of her life, a tragic tale of woe.

After that point, however, Original Sin becomes a completely different film, filled with staged deaths, cons, counter-cons, unexpected revelations, and about ten completely outrageous, over-the-top plot twists.

Truffaut’s film really focused on obsession, and the plot was kept fairly simple to allow him to focus on the rich man, who loved the con woman even after he knew she was an imposter. The new film is really plot-driven. I don’t think it was handled properly. When a film is based on the plot, and the plot is based on secrets, you have to let it unravel naturally. This film is directed by someone who just can’t keep a secret, and it spoils the fun. When the rich man and the con woman are first living together, he completely ignores some warning signs that she’s lying. She smells of cigars and she tells him she smoked one of his. He catches her with another guy and she explains that she was asking for directions. She loves her morning coffee, even though she had written him that she never drinks anything but tea. C’mon now. There are two problems with this line of presentation:

1. Are we supposed to believe that he is really that obtuse? Being obsessed is one thing, but complete stupidity is quite another.

2. Even though he can’t see the scam, we can. The clues would have been obvious enough, but the film’s framing device shows her telling her story from prison at the beginning of the film. Therefore, when she is revealed to be an imposter, there is no surprise for us. If a film is driven by plot surprises, what is left when the surprises are not surprising?

What makes it worse is that there are so many off-the-wall plot twists. The script piles twist upon twist, but frankly, none of them are really very surprising once you realize that the author is simply going to pull out all of the stops. A film can be fun if it leads us to think one thing, then drops an opposite bombshell on us when we really don’t expect it. A film may even get away with doing this more than once. But once we become aware that the changes of direction are the entire raison d’etre of the movie, we expect everything to be a con, and are therefore subsequently unsurprised to find that things differ from their appearance. We knew it already, because everything in the film is that way. We’ve received a written invitation to our own surprise party, and we can’t even pretend we’re surprised.

David Mamet can get away with that because he is brilliant enough to manage an ambience where the absence of a plot twist is a surprise and is therefore, in itself, a plot twist. Mamet is, however, about the only person in the world with the elan to pull this off.

Having said all that, let me add that Original Sin is not as bad as the critics said (12% at Rotten Tomatoes). It’s not Plan 10 From Outer Space. It’s more like one of those potboiler Pia Zadora movies with Jolie slumming as the Zadora substitute. In fact, I thought the performances were amusing in an overwrought soap opera fashion, and I think that’s the effect they were going for. Lara Croft Jolie did a good impersonation of Kathleen Turner, except with a Madonna-like phony-baloney British accent; Zorro Banderas was convincing as a lovesick rich guy without a clue; and Mickey Mantle (Thomas Jane) did OK as the hammy actor pretending to be a detective.

I did love the fact that the evil guy gets to run around part of the movie in a Satan costume (the character is an actor) – man, you can’t get any further over the top in the symbolism department!

Facts That Shatter Your Image of American Presidents

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The article

While it is true that James Garfield was actually killed by his own doctors, the part about Alexander Graham Bell is not stated accurately. He did not mislocate the bullet. Indeed, if Bell had been permitted to use his metal detector the way he wanted to, he might have saved Garfield’s life, even after all the bungling the doctors had done previously. While the metal bedsprings did present a problem, Bell’s methods could have overcome that. The greater problem was simply that Doctor Bliss had staked his reputation on the fact that the bullet was on the right side of Garfield’s body, and would therefore not let Bell examine Garfield’s left, where the bullet actually was.

I’m about to go off on a tangent …

Because his presidency was brief and not especially memorable, we learn little about Garfield in school, which is a shame, because he was in many ways the greatest man we ever elected to the office. He was as smart as Jefferson or either Adams and distinguished himself in many different fields.

His early career in academia was just about unbelievable. He entered college without the funds to pay tuition, so he spent his freshman year working as a full-time janitor and handyman in the school. Just one year later, he was teaching literature and classical languages. He did not apply for the teaching positions. The administrators simply recognized his extraordinary ability and appointed him. By the time he was 26, he was college president.

He then became a lawyer, passing the bar without the benefit of a legal education and eventually arguing before the Supreme Court. He also served as a preacher who was considered the premier orator of his era. He continued in those professions for a short time until the Civil War broke out, at which point he enlisted in the Union Army. His career as a soldier was again incredible. By the time he left he was a major general.

His career in the House was also incredible. He was nominated by admirers while he was still a soldier, and did not campaign. He was elected anyway. He was perhaps the only man in America who consistently held the moral high ground above Abraham Lincoln. Garfield admired the Great Emancipator in many ways, but found Lincoln to be a pussy, both in his indecisive conduct of the war and in his wishy-washy attitude toward slavery. Indeed, although they belonged to the same party, Garfield did not even support Honest Abe’s re-election to the Presidency, although neither did he oppose it. In retrospect, Garfield was right about the war in every way. On the slavery question, Garfield held the moral high ground above Lincoln, no small accomplishment in its own right, but Lincoln was a political pragmatist who had to hold together a fragile coalition, and could not always afford to pursue moral right without compromise. Garfield did not actually wield much power, so he could afford the luxury of moral certitude. After Lincoln’s death, however, Garfield became a skillful compromiser, but not on civil rights. No man of the era more strongly and unambiguously championed education and voting rights for African-Americans than James A Garfield.

His rise to the Presidency was similar to his reluctant entry into the House. He didn’t want to be President, and made absolutely no effort to get the office. He made no effort to get nominated, but was nominated anyway – after he drew the convention’s attention by making a speech nominating another candidate. After the nomination, he barely campaigned, but was elected anyway. He was the last member of the House to rise directly to the Presidency.

You may have noted a common thread in the stories above. He did not choose to be a professor, a congressman or the President. In each case, his competence and intellect were so universally admired that he was essentially handed the job. He was also known to be brilliant in both the bar and the pulpit. The only other career he actively sought was in the military, and he was obviously pretty damned good at that as well.

He accomplished all of that despite being raised in dire poverty. He was born in a log cabin, and his father died when he was 18 months old.

If you are interested to learn more about Garfield, I can tell you that Candice Millard’s “Destiny of the Republic” is a very readable bio.

Happy Giant Pink Japanese Penis Day

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Kanamara Penis Festival, Kawasaki, Japan

On the Scoopy Calendar, this is the second most important holiday of the year, after William Shatner’s Birthday

Like Easter, GPJPD it marks the beginning of Spring. I keep hoping they will make the pink peeps penis-shaped to commemorate the convergence.

A repeated word of warning for those who hope to attend: do NOT try to smuggle giant pink penises into Japan from other countries. In addition to the fact that you would face the dire legal penalties for giant penis smuggling (imagine Midnight Express, except with giant penises), there are simply good reasons why you should not do so.

  • First of all, they would not be sacred. Only giant pink Japanese penises have been blessed. That would be like trying to pass off a bottle of Ozarka from 7-Eleven as Holy Water in the Vatican.
  • Second, the Most Honorable Japanese Department of Agriculture and Giant Genitalia is concerned that introducing a new strain of giant pink penises into their eco-system could cause the native strain to mutate or die out. It’s the same reason why you can’t take frogs to Australia.

The main thing to remember is that there is simply no need for you to take such a risk. There are plenty of giant pink Japanese penises to go around, and that means a fun day for one and all.

Joanna Christie topless in Ø and Narcos

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Joanna Christie in Ø.

Ø is not a symbol, but a letter in some Scandinavian languages and, more interestingly, a one-letter word in Danish. It means “island.” This web-based 2016 mini-series was, for lack of a better explanation, kind of a Danish version of The Wicker Man. IMDB summarizes it as follows: “A thriller about a female ‘citygirl’ detective trying to solve a murder, on a desolate Scandinavian island that gradually absorbs her.”


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The only clip I have is this cropped, silent video

To my knowledge, Joanna did only one other nude scene: a topless appearance in episode two of Narcos.


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