If you've ever dreamed of becoming a character on "The Simpsons," here's your chance. That's WWP above, by the way, the newest resident of Springfield [Oregon, thankyouverymuch], courtesy of SimpsonizeMe.com.
[The image above is based on this photo, gleaned from WWP's church directory, of all things.]
WWP's seen all the movies [but read not one of the books], so he's far from being an expert on the Harry Potter phenom that is taking place at this very moment. Still, we can't help but venture a few guesses:
No guesses about the scar. Maybe Keith Olbermann has it right. We'll find out soon.
We now return to regular programming...
"I have absolutely no regrets about my acting career. Sometimes, I have doubts, but in balance I think it was certainly worthwhile for me to have temporarily left the real world and become an actor. I'm very proud of my work, because I did the best I could possibly do at the time. I always wanted to make one movie with a good acting role for me, but I never did. When I see actors today like William Hurt or Eric Roberts, I think they're such a gift to cinema. I wish I had the chance to do what they do. I knew that I could and many people have agreed with me, but it didn't work out that way. I still have great faith in the film business. The movies seem to be getting better all the time. Whatever direction the industry takes, I wish I were still a part of it. But I'm not going to get into the satin shirts and take a pill. I've made peace with my life."
--"B" film actor Kerwin Mathews
[From a 1987 interview, via IMDb.com.]
It was in the the very early 1960s, in the darkness of the John Danz Theatre in Bellevue, Wash., that WWP first cast eyes on Kerwin Mathews: handsome, blondish, virile – the sort of "guy's guy" a guy wants to hang around with. [Keep in mind, WWP was only 7 at the time; go figure why it took so long to figure out the gay thing … but we digress].
The movie was "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad," a rather ridiculous but nevertheless engaging swashbuckler, the very kind of film the impossibly handsome Mathews would be called to act in time and time again, probably to the detriment of his career advancement. But in endless repeats at the Danz [which the young WWP watched again and again], and in the other cineplexes of the day, Kerwin Mathews persisted and became a Saturday matinee idol like no other -- occasionally great, more than often just unusually good, and nearly always better than his material.
Mathews had his start in the memorable early days of live television in the 1950s, but he staked out his acting claim by appearing afterward in those pirate movies -- long before Johnny Depp ever dared to offer an argh [or for that matter, would be born]. Of course, there were innumerable other clunkers and B-list movies along the way and especially later in his career. [Anyone remember "Jack the Giant Killer" or "Pirates of Blood River"? Thought not.] His last film appearance was in 1978 in the forgotten and forgettable "Prince of Blood."
The lack of limelight success seems not to have daunted Mathews. And from that, we take note. When pausing to wonder whether "it's all been worth it" or "have we done the right thing," we will choose hereafter to recall this rather unremarkable career, but remember more the importance, and the inspiration, of "keeping keeping on."
Kerwin Mathews died last week, at the age of 81. He is survived by his partner of 46 years, Tom Nicoll, and their two cats.
[Official Kerwin Mathews website, here.]
The faux rating scheme you see above - -wherein blogs and websites like this can be evaluated and awarded an MPAA-like endorsement -- seems to be the blog meme of the day. So what the heck, we'll take the bait. Turns out, Worldwide Pablo gets a respectable PG-13 rating [which seems about right]. We'd have been rated PG but for the fact that we've used the word "death" three times recently, "fags" twice and "gay" once. [Only once?]
Apparently they have no problem with the F-bomb we dropped here yesterday [see below]. Maybe profanity on the Internet is like violence in the cineplex?
Whatever. But don't tell these folks.
If you live in the British Commonwealth or have any inkling of Anglo history at all, you know that yesterday, March 25, was just not any other day: As any 10-year-old in the U.K. can tell you, yesterday was the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade inside the British Empire, an historical turning point that might rightly be described as “the beginning of the end” of slavery. [The struggle to eliminate slavery in the Empire altogether, alas, continued for another 26 years -- and even longer, more than three decades more, in fact, here at home.]
Of course, there were ceremonies and pomp galore today to mark the occasion on the other side of the pond. [They are English, after all.] But with the pageantry, there was also an abundance of apology and contrition [see photo above], qualities, it is worth noting, that struggle mightily still to find their way into the conversation of American slavery. Perhaps by the time the United States is 200 years into her post-slave history, she too will recognize the error of her ways. Sooner would not be too soon, we think.
A lifelong Methodist, WWP is well acquainted with the players of history who forever altered Britain’s errorful ways and put into motion the acts that ended the commonwealth’s slave trade and, later, outright slave ownership itself. The major credit rightly goes to William Wilberforce, the politician and evangelical Anglican who over many years, decades even, prevailed upon Parliament to outlaw the evil of slavery. [Wilberforce is the subject of a current motion picture, which opened just this week in the U.K.; it's been playing stateside for the past two weeks or so, and it is very much worth seeing.] It is worth noting that Wilberforce’s friend and compatriot, another evangelical within the Anglican tradition, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, similarly and as vociferously denounced the practice of slavery, declaring it an “execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature.” Wesley saved his harshest words, though, for the slavery employed in the former colonies, adjudging it “the vilest that ever saw the sun.”
Choice words. But as good as Wesley and Wilberforce and their reasoning and rhetoric were, the triumph of the abolitionist movement actually belongs to another man, their contemporary, John Newton, the former slave trader whose life-altering change of heart not only reconnoitered history and indelibly imprinted itself upon the heart of freedom, but also provided the essential and eternal anthem of freedom and grace that forever changed hymnody.
Perhaps you know it.
[Much more about John Newton, here, and a wonderful new hymn for the occasion, here. Read the original words of the hymn, and the source of this post's headline, here.]
WWP readily admits to being a recovering journalist. After earning a journalism degree in 1977 [along with another more famous alumna], we coursed our way over the next several years through terms of servitude at various newspapers, weekly and daily, before landing the current gig that's endured, lo, these past 17 years. We've dined with Charles Kuralt, Diane Sawyer and friends, slogged through enough city council meetings to qualify as a statesman in training, pored through a quantity of public records that would thrill only a reference librarian, and, as any working journalist will tell you, have succumbed to the occupational hazard of having digested several million words in the process.
In hindsight, much of it is now a blur. But here's an observation that is not: While the corporate entities that control mainstream media may be experiencing tribulations, the state of journalism itself is not nearly as troubled -- and especially not as much as the blogosphere would have us believe. More to the point: The blogosphere isn't nearly as good as it says it is.
Such a criticism surely will seem to be a heresy to the digital class that can't keep its fingers off its qwerty. But the more we toil here, and the more we read, the more convinced we are that blogs are over time becoming increasingly subject to the very same snares as conventional media, a level of profound failure that blogs are so famous for despising: concentration into mega-ness, lapses into self-seriousness, deepening bias, blindness to plurality of ideas, questionable credentials, bad reporting, and worse, poor writing and faulty reasoning. [One needn't venture far: Check out this blunt-force "media review" piece, penned by a blogger/journalist so clueless and vapid that it would appear that he received little or no benefit from his advanced English class sessions on the use and meaning of parody or sarcasm, or for that matter, nuance, and which only makes his rhetorical opponents look all the smarter. One cringes to read it; to call it an embarrassment would be an insult to the idea of understatement. And to think this is from one of the better-edited and produced sites ... but we digress.]
We're not lost to the idea of blogging. We'll still be sticking around here on the blog, if only because we believe that blogs are still the best whistleblowers to government and business interests gone bad. Very often they break real news, or better yet, offer genuinely original commentary. Sometimes, as a bonus, they're actually well-written. Some actually believe in the idea of building consensus or endorsing the disappearing and now radically quaint idea of plurality -- once an essential idea to our survival but now, to our everlasting diminishment, an anachronism unfairly dismissed as being old-fashioned.
It used to be said that one should believe nothing heard, and only half of what one read. Given today's dynamics, however, our advice is to discount at least 95-98 percent of what you read. The rest, most likely, unfortunately, is probably still crap. At least it's free, right?
WWP thinks, however, that Dad was right: You get what you pay for.
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