Meat Puppets

Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 3 months ago to Entertainment
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Did you ever notice how many of the best actors are idiots when they don't have a script.? I don't mean the actors you never heard of, but top-line people who can really act, like Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, and Robert DiNiro. Give them a script and you are pretty much guaranteed a good or even excellent performance.However, without a script a garbled, often incomprehensible, bunch of twaddle emanates from their lips.. They remind me of ventriloquist's dummies, only instead of wood and paint, they are made of flesh and blood.They purport to be human --- but are they? I guess Shakespeare had them down some hundreds of years ago, "Full of sound and fury, signifying, nothing."


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  • Posted by rbroberg 8 years, 3 months ago
    Actors are addicted to drama. Drama needs a hero and a villain and the hero has to be an "underdog" and also of moral righteousness. But what we don't recognize is that actors, as addicts, replace morality with drama. Notice that screenplays are more and more about anti-heroes. Easier to re-define morality than to give up the sweet sensation of winning the day with nothing to go on but a dime and a smile or... millions and Das Capital.
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  • Posted by rbroberg 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I admit I once tried to destroy Objectivism logically. After a lot of effort, I realized I can only attempt to do so with illogic. But I can't wave my hands fast enough to jump off a building and expect to fly. But.. I'm not a genius. Maybe you are.
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  • Posted by rbroberg 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Since I'm on the topic of celebrity encounters, let me just add Mel Gibson. No, he doesn't belong on your list, but, he was an ass. I met him at an AA meeting in Malibu after his first year off the sauce. In elementary school grades, I gave him a slightly higher mark than he got ranting against minorities in the name of the bloody pulp he called god. Thus, instead of U for Unsatisfactory I give him an N for Needs Improvement.
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  • Posted by rbroberg 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Pretty sure the moment when it all went downhill for Alec B was when he almost hit me pulling into the Chevron on Gailey Avenue with his white Jag while I was walking from my apartment in Westwood down to the corner Fatburger.
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  • Posted by bspielb 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That is all movies and the actors have become. Propaganda to push the ideas of leftists. Ideas like free love, confused sexuality and amoral actions as being ok in a normal society. Ideas that eventually brought down the previous great republics like Greece and Rome. Keeping your children away from that balderdash is the only way to make sure the next generation has the intelligence and moral fiber to say no, to all of it, and save this great nation.
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  • Posted by Dobrien 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    No sir. My dad was a Chevy Cadillac dealer
    He sent me to get trained in at a larger dealer
    Tom was a salesman . He moved to California
    And was about 40 at the time married with a family I was 18 . A friend went with me and we stayed in Tom's home in Rancho Bernardo as I scoped out the lay of the land. I then moved to Dana Point and had roommates including my 30 yr old cousin, on St. Patrick's day my girl friend and now wife of 38 years came out we got an apartment in Huntington Beach soon we married
    Had our first child and we moved back to Minn.
    Sadly I did not keep in touch with Tom.
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  • Posted by Abaco 8 years, 3 months ago
    Few finished school (12th grade, for this discussion).
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Would that work be what you do now? The nosy inquiring sniffs of a dino's mind wants to know.
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  • Posted by NealS 8 years, 3 months ago
    If you look back at some of the videos where there wasn't a lectern in front of him, you'll find out we actually had a president just like that. He could not speak without a script, and sometimes you couldn't even make any sense of what he was stuttering about. It really wasn't that long ago, perhaps you might even remember him..

    Come to think of it, there appears to be a lot of representatives of ours in congress that are just like that too. It's like hiring some poor person to run the economy for the country, we might as well have some real duds representing us too.
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  • Posted by mccannon01 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "I am saying that denigrating...". Actually, Mike, you didn't say that. If you had, then this conversation would have been different. I'm surprised you, as a writer, missed the humorous metaphor in my invocation of the Pinocchio fairy tale here. Here's a hint for those in Rio Linda: Go to Hollywood, get indoctrinated, morph into a far left wing Democrat (symbol: Jackass), then you just can't help the BS that spews from your lips in public. Viva Pinocchio! LOL!

    Your contrived Q & A is specious with respect to my thoughts regarding some conservative doctrine. It's also an irrelevant deflection. Try again, please.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 3 months ago
    Think maybe they never attained a mind?
    Perhaps having to always follow a script and in order to be good at it they need to have a fluid identity...always someone else's identity and never their own. In short, perhaps they've become automatons...just following the program.
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  • Posted by Maritimus 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If you guys don't mind, I would like to add a different perspective to this discussion about actors and films.
    Let me start with what I consider an axiom: to write exceptionally well, you need, first of all, to be able to think exceptionally well.
    Films are written by screenplay writers, directed by directors, shot by cinematographers and performed by acting individuals (how is that for avoiding gender preferences? ;-) ).
    The talented actors and actresses provide beautiful faces, strong and sexy bodies and recite the text, adding facial expressions and body language, mainly guided by the director. Therefore, mostly, they enunciate other people's thoughts and expressions. But, because they are the faces of the film, they get to be admired by the mass audiences much more than the fundamental creators of the films.
    The smart actors absorb better the directors' guidance because they understand it better. But, that does not make them very deep thinkers.
    When an actor becomes a director, it shows as a benefit at both ends. One example that crosses my mind is Clint Eastwood. He directed better because he was an actor and acted better because he was a director.
    I think that this leads to the conclusion that one should not expect from people with appealing looks and good memory, famous and wealthy because their films sell a lot of tickets, any deep understanding of life, philosophical, economic or political issues. After all they are experts in blabbing what others have told them.
    Just my opinion.
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  • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I've encountered other libertarians at Mensa meetings. Not many, but at least in proportion to those in the general population. Most people (Mensans included) do not fully apply their logic capabilities to the areas of philosophy or politics.
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  • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Actually the lyrics are:
    "Here we are now, entertain us
    I feel stupid and contagious
    Here we are now, entertain us."

    So it's more from the point of view of the audience, which of course can be just as leftist as the entertainers.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Can't recall Mel Jazz save for his voice sounding kinda familiar. Just looked him up and noticed that he did his thing in your home state.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 8 years, 3 months ago
    I find that the Hollywood method actors are all this way, but the Shakespearean actors like Kenneth Brannagh can at least carry on a coherent conversation. That doesn't say they don't often spout the same ridiculous liberal talking points as the doofuses, but they sound so much better at it.
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  • Posted by Dobrien 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Laughing .As one who can obviously handle more than two tasks at the same time , entertaining oneself while doing a potentially monotonous task
    Could help you stay alert.
    It reminds me of a tv show" Mel's matinee theater"
    Mel would take a certain caller say the fifth who would answer some type of question for $25 .
    It was almost always a house wife and Mel would ask "what does your husband due? A local joke was that one woman answered that her husband was a garbage truck driver. No matter what any woman answered Mel would say "he's got a good job" this woman answered "the hell he does".
    Mel Jazz was lost for words at that point and they cut to a commercial.

    Ouch.....
    A copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of Marvel Comics' web-crawling super-hero from 1963, has sold for $1.1 million in auction, beating Detective Comics #27, Batman's first appearance from 1939, to become the second most expensive comic ever sold (Suitably, Superman's first appearance in 1938's Action ...Mar 9, 2011
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 3 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Don't feel bad.
    I had the first issue of Spiderman, The Hulk, Iron Man, Ant Man, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, Dr. Strange, X-Men, Creepy, Eerie, Vamperilla, the only four issues of a failed Blazing Combat and where did they all and more first issues go?
    Guess.
    I suddenly recall when I first started to work the back gate tower. I got on the hand radio and announced that "the garbage truck is here."
    My angry shift commander phoned to tell me that I was never to say garbage truck again. From now on I was to always say "sanitation services."
    For the rest of the shift when unheard in that tower I was nasally intoning "sanitation services" with a British accent.
    "Oih say, sanutaaachun services hauve arrived!"
    "By Jove, it''s saunnityution services time!"
    "Oh, sun-you-teh-shun services sounds so much squeaky cleaner than some ole' actual dirty--ugh! yuck!--garrbage truck!"
    "Phony for stupid public radio relations is wot this sanyoiutaytion services be all about by golly!
    Hey, blokes! If oih don't say sunutaytion services, I'll be in for a spot of bother, I would."
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