Yes, I qualify as a curmudgeon...because I do not tolerate fools or stupidity gladly. Actually, not stupdity (which I suppose can't be helped) so much as Dan (the man)'s wonderful phrase: willfully ignorant. I call it the Arrogance of Ignorance. I am agog that we seem to live in an age where people don't respect knowledge or intelligence, don't seem to know anything, don't think they HAVE to know anything, and our proud of the fact they don't know anything. And resent people who do know something. This was an attitude I continually ran into during my days in the trenches of Hollywood...dealing with people who had no knowledge of the history or the demands of their business, people supposedly nurturing dramatic material to fruition who had no skills, training, or knowledge of drama or literature.
I'm actually a pretty easy-going guy; I didn't mind fighting battles of truly creative differences. Unfortunately, most of the battles I fought were against a rudimentary lack of common sense. It was one of the few businesses where you could actually show someone how their suggestion would alter or unravel something all the way down the line and they would tell you to go and do it anyway. Battles were rarely ever about the work, but about ego, vanity, or power plays.
Unfortunately, like Druxy, I am an inveterate windmill tilter and idealist...which probably is how I managed to stay in the business as long as I did. But idealists usually become cynics. I think one of the reasons I enjoy BK and Ellison so much is I see these same things in them as myself. We're all passionate people and passion thwarted or frustrated is not a pretty thing.
Like BK, I also hate, despise people who hide behind anonymity. If you don't have the guts to put your name to your opinion, it has no value to me at all. you are a coward.
I also don't have much patience with people who think the dream is enough, but don't take the risk. Another reason I get along with BK & Harlan. We not only dared to dream, but dared to put ourselves on the chopping block for the dream. Two favourite quotes I live by are: "He that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose." by Anne Bronte and "Ninety percent of talent is knowing what to do with it." by my old college theatre prof, Charles Dickens (yes, his real name). I loathe all these acceptance speeches by performers who say "if you dream hard enough it will come true." That's a bunch of malarkay to be spewing to young impressionable viewers. The dream is never enough. You have to work toward the dream. You don't become Pavlova or Olivier or Pavarotti by just dreaming and wanting to be.
I also am a curmudgeon about how people are fooled by the blatant lies of politicians and why reporters just don't call them out on that stuff right at the moment. How much news footage do we have of Dick Cheney telling bald-faced lies? Why do credible media sources even give him the air-time? His latest: torture was legal, effective, made us safer. First of all, where is the outrage that someone is trying to JUSTIFY TORTURE? Secondly, it is NOT legal. The laws against it are on the books and have been in the treaties for years, we've prosecuted and punished others who have done it. Thirdly, how many interrogation experts have to be paraded on the nightyl news to say torture doesn't elicit any valuable information and often produces misinformation. Finally, Cheney/Bush and their reviled methods have not made us safer. Under their watch, we had the greatest terrorist attack ever because they could not be bothered to read memoes entitled Bin Laden Determined to Attack the US...information they had that they didn't get from torture and they didn't or couldn't read it. After 9/11, the world was behind us, but we squandered that support and good will and further inflamed the hatred of our enemies by fighting the wrong war instead of going after the proper foe and by using methods like torture...to say nothig of winnowing away our constitution and civil liberties. Made us safer? I found the Bush administration a lot scarier and far more threatening than any terrorists.
I'm also bored with newscasts that trot out political flacks from both sides to show fairness, but all we end up with are screaming matches with both pundits merely parrotting the party talking points and,once again, no one being held accountable or being called on their bull manure. I want the truth; not debate.
I'm a curmudgeon about the loss of literature, language, and the dying art of conversation. Much of that goes, once again, to the Arrogance of Ignorance. " I can't be bothered to read a book...I have to watch eight hours of mindless reality drivel on TV...or check my facebook page eighty times a day...or talk loudly on my cell in public places to my friends about my boring mundane life." We're so busy being connected and wired...that we're missing life happening all around us. We're so awash in trivial information that were not acquiring knowledge.
Unlike BK, I learned early on in LA to mellow out in a car. There's nothing you can do about the experience of driving in LA; to rage against it will only burst a blood vessel. I used to make sure I had a lot of good music in the car and cranked up the volume.
