Ray

Excellent movie. Jamie Foxx is Ray Charles!

NewMexiKen hasn’t seen enough of the nominated performances to be an informed judge, but I just can’t imagine better performances than Jamie Foxx and Hilary Swank.

Won’t you let me take you on a sea cruise?

From Dave Barry’s Blog —

Hey, blogsters –

Sorry I haven’t posted lately, but I am with my family and Ridley’s family aboard a Disney cruise ship, called “The Magical World of 500,000 Shrieking Children.” There have been many highlights, the most dramatic being when somebody threw up in the Goofy pool. Really. When this happened, there were about 15,000 shrieking children in the Goofy pool, which is about the size of a ping-pong table, so it was very exciting.

Also, on the island of St. Martin, we and many other Disney cruisers experienced “European style” sunbathing, which involves random people getting extremely naked. Tragically, these were NOT people that anybody wanted to see naked. I think the people on the beach should be allowed to vote on who gets naked, and who does not.

That’s all from the magical world of the sea.

Valentine’s Day help from The Onion

Onion Love Coupons. Caveat: Some funny, some not. Some tasteless.

Should they lift the ban on cell phone use on airplanes?

“If they lift the ban on cell-phone use, they better lift the ban on passengers beating the shit out of each other, too.”

What Do You Think? from The Onion

Incentive

“[A cardiologist] found that a group of people with an average age of 70 who had started exercising in midlife - as Whitlock did at age 41 - and kept it up had ‘hearts indistinguishable from healthy 30-year-olds.’”

At 73, Marathoner Runs as if He’s Stopped the Clock

Role model or Show off

From The New York Times, At 73, Marathoner Runs as if He’s Stopped the Clock:

Ed Whitlock, a 73-year-old Canadian marathoner who may be the world’s best athlete for his age, rotates his running shoes like the tires of a car. “I have 10 pairs that I alternate,” he said. “That way they don’t wear out.”

Neither does Whitlock, who lives in Milton, Ontario, a Toronto suburb. He trains up to three hours a day, about 23 miles, close to the marathon distance of 26 miles 385 yards, and more than 100 miles a week.

Most Olympic marathoners do less. But Whitlock has been heralded like an Olympic champion since running the Toronto Waterfront Marathon last September in 2 hours 54 minutes 49 seconds.

He was 26th among 1,690 finishers and shattered his own world record for a runner 70 or older by more than four minutes. The previous year, in the same race, Whitlock ran 2:59:10, becoming the first person 70 or older to break three hours in a marathon.

“Ed is pushing the limits, like Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile,” said Bill Rodgers, 57, who won the Boston and the New York City marathons four times each. “I think he should slow down and have some respect for us youngsters.”

Rhapsody in Blue

George Gershwin’s phenomenal blending of jazz and classical music, premiered at Aeolian Hall, in New York, on this date 81 years ago. Gershwin wrote it in three weeks, reportedly improvising some of the piano parts during the premiere.

You can hear an acoustical recording by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra made on June 10, 1924, by clicking here [RealOne Player]. That’s the composer, Mr. Gershwin, at the piano.

Rhapsody in Blue was one of NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. You can listen to the NPR report here [RealOne Player].

Thomas Moran …

was born on this date in 1837. The National Gallery of Art has an outstanding online exhibit on Moran.

Click to see a replica of his classic painting Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Sled today, skis tomorrow

Grammy

Los Angeles Times critics predict the Grammy Awards, these two by Robert Hilburn.

Album of the year

Ray Charles and Various Artists: “Genius Loves Company”
Green Day: “American Idiot”
Alicia Keys: “The Diary of Alicia Keys”
Usher: “Confessions”
Kanye West: “The College Dropout”

Even a habitual gambler is probably going to sit out this race because there are so many intangibles involved. West’s album is far and away the most acclaimed work, but the late soul genius Charles could benefit from the sympathy/respect vote, and rockers Green Day might step to the podium if all the R&B entries split the vote. Here’s hoping justice reigns and West captures the Grammy.

Record of the year

Black Eyed Peas: “Let’s Get Started”
Ray Charles & Norah Jones: “Here We Go Again”
Green Day: “American Idiot”
Los Lonely Boys: “Heaven”
Usher: “Yeah!”

It’s a wonder how records as ordinary as “Let’s Get Started” and “Heaven” made it past the blue ribbon screening. “American Idiot” has a strong point of view, but is far from memorable. That leaves a tough choice between the wonderful vocal teaming of Charles and Jones and the great ambition and dance-floor zaniness of “Yeah!” I’d vote for Usher.

Bill Russell …

is 71 today. Back-to-back NCAA championships at the University of San Francisco, 1955-1956 — 55 consecutive wins. Eleven NBA championships with the Celtics in 13 years, 1957-1969 — Russell was the only player there for all 11.

Simply the greatest winner in basketball history.

Omar Bradley …

the G.I General, was born on this date in 1893.

Abraham Lincoln …

was born on this date in 1809.

Worth reading at least once a year —

The Address at Gettysburg (November 19, 1863):

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And, from his Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865):

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.