the groundhog day project

Roger Moore died today. Last night, a bunch of people died in Manchester. I'd rather think about the former than the latter. So, I'm watching For Your Eyes Only . I grew up on this movie. Roger Moore was my James Bond. This one, Octopussy , A View to a Kill --I've seen these movies far too many times considering I never made a deliberate effort to watch them repeatedly (as I obviously have with other films). For Your Eyes Only , especially. It was on one of those first VHS tapes my family had. It was one of the movies we watched regularly. It has been a while since I last watched it, though. This very 80s (or really, 70s) music as Bond goes after Blofeld (who I never really had much context for when I was a kid and we'd watch this; he was just some bald guy who randomly tried to kill Bond and then Bond murdered him, and that alone is also so very 80s. Then the music video opening credits with vaguely naked women dancing in silhouette. (Visuals that meant very differen...

Parasocial relationships are not just for fictional characters. For example yesterday Wes Craven died. Numerous individuals online--myself included--posted about him as if they (we) knew him. As if his death matters on a personal level. But, we probably just saw his films over the years. Still, we form an attachment. We look forward to his new films... He hadn't directed a film since SCRE4M four years ago. A couple weeks ago , I got to thinking about Robin Williams dying a year ago. Back when I was still watching Groundhog Day every day instead of just once a month, I wrote three entries in a row ( 207 208 209 ) dealing with the death of Harold Ramis. And, it was personal to me. Groundhog Day was my life for a year, and it lingers still, not just in viewing it once a month but also in conversational references, in lecture references (I use the news clips from Groundhog Day in my public speaking class to talk about delivery), in the way I think about things, about life. Not ...

It's strange that Jonathan Safran Foer (Elijah Wood) is almost a cypher in his own story. He drives the plot, sure but he is not really changed by anything here... well, not very much. There is, arguably a change in that at the end of the film he not only makes a bag for someone else (Grandfather) but also empties his own bag of dirt from Trachimbrod onto his own grandfather's grave. (We don't actually see this happen, but the film cuts from the dirt in Jonathan's hand to dirt in Alex's hand at Grandfather's funeral, implying that Jonathan will let that dirt go.) He changes enough to give up an item from his collection to connect these two men. (To be fair, we have no particular reason other than presumption to think he has not given up an item before.) The emotional beats in the story belong to Alex (Eugene Hutz) and Grandfather (Boris Leskin) and Lista (Laryssa Lauret). (Considering one of the deleted scenes, in which it seems that Sammy Davis, Junior, Juni...

Day 207 - more than anything else began a three-day obituary of sorts for Harold Ramis in this blog. During phase one of this blog—if you’re new, that’s when I was watching Groundhog Day every day—I would include a “reason to repeat a day forever” at the end of the entry. That particular entry ended with a rather lengthy one... “I will forego the obvious, trying to keep people from dying,” I began. As Phil learns in the third act of Groundhog Day sometimes that is a pointless exercise. If we didn’t have death looming off on the horizon, life wouldn’t have the value it does. If we’re lucky enough or bold enough, we live life to the fullest. And, when death comes for us, we face it with dignity and resolve, knowing that we have lived. So, no, I would not necessarily try to keep anyone from dying. But, for those who I cannot save, I would be with them, to be sure they are neither panicked nor confused. I would give comfort where I could and maybe rage alongside those more resistant to...

There's an X on page 37 of Benesh (2011), but I don't want to talk about Benesh today. Still, I'll explain the X. By the way, there's a yellow tab labeled "self-awareness/Rita-awareness" on pages 37/38. Highlighted bit: "Phil responds, 'That's not true. I don't even like myself.' That is humor, perhaps deflective and defensive humor, but, like his calling Nancy by Rita's name, an unconscious revelation of a deeper truth..." "He may, at this point believe he sincerely admires Rita, but at the same time he is coming to the realization that he hasn't earned her" (p. 37). Then the X through the end of this bit: "Later his moral profess is confirmed when he states, as she sleeps (her sleep signifying he has, unlike before, neither means nor motive to impress her), 'I know I don't deserve you'" (ibid). Phil does not say that. When I was describing È già ieri on my second viewing, I would pause an...

The only time Harold Ramis ever worried about his career was in 1972. He was living in Encino, California with his first wife, Anne. He had $40 in the bank. He'd written a novel with Michael Shamberg. An editor sent back the manuscript alone with a copy of The Elements of Style . He recounts the story in GQ , July 2009. "My wife said to me, 'Has it occurred to you that you might not be successful?' She wasn't saying I wouldn't be. She was just posing the question. And I said, 'Oh man. It's occurring to me right now .'" The reporter, Brett Martin, asked, "How long did you beat yourself up over it?" Ramis responded: I swear this is true: At that moment, the phone rang, and it was the owner of Second City asking me to come back and produce the television show that reconnected me with Bill Murray [Ramis had covered the troupe in 1968 while writing freelance for the Chicago Daily News and had worked with Murray on The National Lampoon ...

Two things: Michelle and I were saddened to hear of the passing of Harold Ramis, one of America's greatest satirists, and like so many other comedic geniuses, a proud product of Chicago's Second City. When we watched his movies – from ‘Animal House’ and ‘Caddyshack’ to ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Groundhog Day’ – we didn’t just laugh until it hurt. We questioned authority. We identified with the outsider. We rooted for the underdog. And through it all, we never lost our faith in happy endings. Our thoughts and prayers are with Harold’s wife, Erica, his children and grandchildren, and all those who loved him, who quote his work with abandon, and who hope that he received total consciousness. and Harold Ramis and I together did the National Lampoon Show off Broadway, Meatballs, Stripes, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day. He earned his keep on this planet. God bless him. That longer one is from President Barack Obama. The shorter one is Bill Murray. But, I actually didn...

There's a force in the universe that makes things happen. All you have to do is get in touch with it. Stop thinking. Let things happen and be... the ball... Find your center. Hear nothing. Feel nothing. That's Chevy Chase as Ty Webb in Caddyshack . I get the impression from quotations in articles or interview clips that Harold Ramis was a bit zen like Webb. He didn't "want to be the Buddha," though, he told Perry Garfinkel of Shambhala Sun . "I just want to admire him." Brett Martin, writing for GQ in 2009, calls Ramis a "sympathetic, though nonpracticing, Buddhist." With that one character in Caddyshack , with his own understated performance as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters , and most obviously with the entirety of his cinematic masterpiece Groundhog Day , Ramis infused his films with a relaxed sort of zaniness that makes them hold up quite well long after the fact of their releases. Despite his success, he didn't particularly buy in...

I neglected to mention one particular media use of "Groundhog Day" yesterday. Al Logan Slagle, aka Allogan Slagle, according to his biography on UC Davis ' website, ...was a member of the United Keetoowah Band of the Cherokee of Oklahoma and worked as an attorney for the Association of American Indian Affairs (AAIA) in Washington, D.C. Prior to that he worked for the California Indian Legal Services in Oakland. He was the co-author of the book, The Good Red Road (1987). He completed his doctorate at Loyola University and was admitted to the California State Bar in 1979 then beginning his career in defending the rights of Native American tribes. His research included making use of National Archives Indian rolls, family genealogies, tribal records, and other documents to write petitions for Native American tribes seeking official legal tribal status. He was also a regular contributor to News from Native California magazine . I've found his column as far back as 199...

(Before I get into today's topic, I would like to point out that Martin Manley's website (the one he put together leading up to his suicide which I've mentioned before here and here ) has apparently been taken down... at least the original version. On a memorial blog "set up to allow Martin's family and friends to share stories and memories of his life" it says: Yahoo has taken down MartinManleyLifeAndDeath.com. There are however several mirror sites working at this time. Here is a partial list ... http://eulopedia.com/home_page.html http://martinmanley.org/ http://www.ussolutions.net/martin/backup/index-2.html http://martinmanleylifeanddeath.com.nyud.net/home_page http://www.zeroshare.info/ The first one seems to be most complete. It includes the U.S. Financial link that the others missed. The martinmanley.org link was set up by Anonymous and has a timed intro message that you can read. To bypass that message go straight to http://martinmanley....

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. - Ernest Hemingway I was asked recently, "What the fuck is with this Groundhog Day thing?" I was also asked, less crudely, if I had laid out in this blog what I would do if I was stuck in a time loop. I've mentioned some things before, and there are things that would go in my "adolescent" phase that are more personal than I care to disclose at this time. I think I'd get to my "good deeds" phase pretty early, but mostly because I'd be conscious of the similarity to Groundhog Day and I'd want to manage more lives saved in one day, not that I could get that into Guinness... except maybe I could, as long as I was committed to a) saving those same lives every day on the off chance is was the end of the time loop and b) getting a Guinness Adjudicator (or at least someone with a video camera-- (Apparently, the ...

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #423 Love is a Quantum Event We experience love as an emotion, but the feeling of love, the desire to be close to the beloved, is actually an unconscious expression of the dynamic nature of sub-atomic particles eternally trying to regroup into the singularity that was their primordial state before the Big Bang blew them apart. While this knowledge helps to explain almost all human behavior, it is completely useless for writing song lyrics and Hallmark cards. Don’t even think about it for marriage proposals. Despite that titlecard getting my attention last night, I was thinking about not just love but death after yesterday’s entry . And, that—and noting the three times I’ve dealt with obituaries in this blog in my recent recap —got me to thinking about one of my favorite books—a comic book actually— Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá. From the back cover of the collected version: WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT DAYS OF YOUR LIFE? Meet Brás de Oliva Do...