Richard Uhler

I came up " Howard Roark." I wanted to say something clever or funny about that, but I don't guess that's a very Howard Roark thing to do <chuckle>. Going back to Pro Tools now...

Yes, but they are mothers and fathers who are willing to use their own children as weapons and as shields. Surely Rosie O'Donnell knows this as well as anyone else who consumes the news; I fear the ability of O'Donnell and many others like her to willingly ignore facts in plain sight as much as I fear the folks with the bomb-vests. But I did not come this far in life to live in fear. I can't think of any way to fight back other than to continue to live my life undeterred; maybe that's enough...?

Although Plan Nine is perhaps the most poorly-executed "professional" film I've yet seen, I don't consider the "worst" because it never fails to entertain me - it gets a laugh out of me every time. Now They Saved Hitler's Brain...THAT is a badly executed film (actually two spliced together) that as I recall bored the daylights out of me (as a teen, anyway - I saw it once 30-some years ago). I think the most boring span of time I ever spent in a theater, though, was in the Cleveland Cinematheque ca. 1988 watching " Mozart - Aufzeichnungen einer Jugend," a German art-house film that depicted an entire morning in the life of the child Wolfgang Mozart in more-or-less real time. This meant minutes-long shots of people sitting, riding in carriages without speaking, scribbling on paper without speaking, rowing boats without speaking, walking around, washing their hands, getting dressed...AAAGH! After the first two hours of this I left; I'm not sure if anything happened during the second two hours but I couldn't bear to stick around to find out. I really liked the Johnny Depp Ed Wood film as well, BTW.

Rand stuff: I finally read Anthem yesterday (and about time); today I started The Art Of Non-Fiction. Next in the queue are Gates Of Fire (Steven Pressfield), then The Sea Wolf (Jack London).

Very nice!

I don't know if I'd say it's "bad," but it is extremely ugly.

I actually regret having seen "Eraserhead" - afterwards I felt almost like I'd been spiritually poisoned. Most of the audience was laughing at various points of the film; which behavior I found incomprehensible and a little frightening.

I imagine you must have seen "The Black Cat" (1934); that's a favorite of mine. Richard, ...I think Lugosi should have played Karloff's part. That's just an opinion. ... An interesting thing to visualise.

I imagine you must have seen "The Black Cat" (1934); that's a favorite of mine. MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE ALERT! MALEVOLENT UNIVERSE ALERT! ;) Well, it's less so than, say, "Eraserhead."

Thanks, Barbara. I think so too.

I imagine you must have seen "The Black Cat" (1934); that's a favorite of mine.

The last film I saw in a theater was 300. Yes, I loved it. I loved the visual texture of the film, and I have been moved by the story of Leonidas of since I was a teen. The last film I watched on video was The Outlaw Josey Wales, which is an old favorite. "The few who stand against many;" I guess there's an obvious pattern in my tastes here...

BTW I appreciate that Now, Voyager was mentioned here - I thought it was a fine film & Claude Raines in particular is a favorite in this house.

Well, I've seen 35 of these; it seems I have some viewing yet to do:) I dunno; I was appalled by American Beauty; my reaction was that it's message equalled "just give up, smoke some weed, and do absolutely nothing of use because stray plastic bags and death are beautiful." Did I miss something? Maybe...

There are many books which I started but never finished; and I'm interested to see that some have already been mentioned in this thread. I started The Unbearable Lightness of Being twice, but was never able to get more than about 30 pages in; likewise The Magic Mountain & To The Lighthouse. I got halfway through Giles Goat-Boy before surrendering to somnolence. Sometimes A Great Notion was good for a hundred pages or so. And Ulysses...ech. I keep thinking that somewhere in all of that verbosity there is a decent novelette screaming to be freed. (I lasted exactly two pages with Finnegan's Wake; same comment applies.) I actually did read all of The Satanic Verses; mainly I recall being highly amused by a character who was pretty obviously supposed to represent Ruhollah Khomeini, and which I suspect was the real trigger for the infamous fatwa. (I've also read The Moor's Last Sigh by Mr. Rushdie, which I found more entertaining in general.) And I really wanted to like the "Tevye The Dairyman" stories, but I just couldn't get into them (granted I was reading them in English, so maybe something was lost...).

I have done, although I never finished ITOE, which I found pretty tough going - starting it over & actually finishing is a planned future project.

thanks to all for your welcomes!

Many thanks. You know, I got so absorbed in guest-reading a thread on this forum this morning that I was nearly late for work - this convinced me it must be a good place for me!

Hello all: I am pleased to have found this forum; it seems a reasonable and congenial place. My introduction to Ayn Rand came by finding a paperback copy of The Fountainhead on a bus seat in Cleveland in 1996. If I were a religious man I'd say it was like a sign from Beyond, but as things are I just chalk it up to the power of random chance. At any rate I began reading the book, and once finished realised that I was now going to have to view everything in the world differently - and gladly so. Later I bought a new copy, and I left the old one on a bus seat. Last week I finished reading The Passion Of Ayn Rand for the third time, having just finished my second go-round on Atlas Shrugged, and decided to see what I could find in the way of forum interaction on the internet so...here I sit, trying to encapsulate a series of life-changing experiences in a brief post. More to come. I'm happy to be here!