I read The Times of India at least twice weekly and am hooked on the gossip news of the movie stars. Movie queen Katrina Kaif says she wants to be married before she is 28 BUT “I will not tolerate infidelity.” Well, that bombshell saves me a roundtrip ticket to Bombay………..Saif Ali Khan has flown off with superbabe Kareena Kapoor to Gstaad, Switzerland to celebrate his birthday. Here’s wishing both of you safe skiing………..Lady Gaga is considering movie offers and while she waits, she is endorsing Twinings Tea. And wouldn’t all you coffee drinkers switch if offered the multimillions the Lady is getting?………….Well, the Gstaad vacation is over and the Saif/Kareena couple have just taken off for 4 days in Chicago. They are adorable………..Great parties are happening in Mumbai and I think I can wangle any of you an invitation. Just whom do you think is prettier? Take your pick.

Oh, not that it matters much but the rains are still pounding in North India. Ten more people died and thousands were affected as flood waters inundated low lying areas. With a couple of hundred million expendables, the Bollywood movie industry won’t notice the loss of lives and will continue to make Hollywood look bush league.

It has become almost de rigueur for each actress to race breathlessly up to the stage when she is announced as the winner of the year’s Best Actress Award and, in her carefully improvised speech, express wonderment that she, not Ms. Meryl Streep, has been declared Queen for the Year. Beaming with noblesse oblige written all over her face, Ms. Streep smiles up at the winner and thinks to herself, “Yes, it is a miracle of sorts, I suppose.”

The Oscars mark high distinction, several cuts above the “With High Distinction” noted next to names of the precious few in the graduation programs at many of our grandest “institutions of higher learning.” The winners must compete with a bevy of nominees, and it is a remarkable thing to consider that there are far more of them in the mere 80 years in which these honors have been bestowed on recipients bedecked in dazzlement than than there are Nobel Prize winners and nominees in the 110 years of that show of pomp and pomposity.

The true high moment of the evening comes some time before the “major” awards are handed out. It is when a person is given his or her award for “lifetime achievement.” Although this award is noncompetitive and the recipient is known in advance, the audience members tremble with excitement at the announcement of the winner. They rise in awe at the mention of the Great Person’s name. The presenter makes a speech about the year’s Grand Champion, not neglecting to point out that the achievement is for far more than contributions to the movie industry but for heavy duty contribution to mankind itself. Sitting in their seats, the audience members nod slightly “So true, so true” and they think “What a wonderful thing that I am in the same profession as he.” Without hurry, the Great One reaches the stage and with humility that would make Mother Teresa seem like a perennial luster after fame and fortune, accepts his richly earned award. It is another high moment in western civilization.

And best of all is that we, sitting at home, are privy to it all, thanks to our TV sets. With a vicarious joy that Sydney Carton would have envied, we watch and are thrilled out of our minds. It is, after all, we who are being honored, we who have been selected to stay up, bleary-eyed, late at night and watch every moment of the glorious evening. Let us make a toast to ourselves, for we deserve it.

We have a national obsession with lists. We even make meta-lists – lists of lists. But let us stick to plain, garden variety lists. TV stations and newspapers depend on lists. If they don’t give us our daily fix, we will turn to other channels and other news sources. The TV announcer says, “We’ll be back right after the break to give you ….the list.” The newspaper says, “Turn to page 42 for the list.” We can hardly wait. We like lists of bests and worsts. For each of these below, there is a corresponding “Worst.”

10 best movies of the year (of the decade, of all-time). [Or it could be 100, 1000, or 10,000.]
Ditto with TV shows.
10 best recipes for chicken noodle soup. [Or apple pie or sauces for shrimp or...]
10 most beautiful women in the world. [Or 10 "hottest" women.]
3 best moments in your life. [Nobody has more than 3 best moments.]
3 things you hate most about George Bush. [Please select from among the following 10.]
10 best vacation beaches.
10 best hotels. [Please give them from 1 to 4 stars.]
10 favorite musicians. [If you are one of 65,550 persons responding to a TV poll, you don't put down "Vivaldi".]

I have scratched the surface. Scratch deeper and you will get an infection. But go to May 13 and look at “Top This and Top That” for more on this. P.S. How about Top 5 posts ever to be on gendinsjournal?

If you give me four random digits, say 3- 7 – 2 – 8, and ask me to spit them back at you, I haven’t got a prayer’s chance of getting them in the right order. If you call me and leave your phone number on my answering machine, it will take me 7 tries – one digit at a time – to get them all. It has been like this all my life – it is not creeping senility.

Now, I have a name for my condition: aural dyslexia. It doesn’t change a thing but it is nice to know. I am a bit like Tevye, in Fiddler on the Roof. You remember. He asks his wife of 25 years if she loves him and finally extracts the confession from her, “I suppose I do.” He also says that it doesn’t change a thing but it is nice to know.

Here’s Tevye, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_y9F5St4j0

Well, why not? This singer-songwriter, composer, arranger, performer’s father has been my friend since I met him in the summer of 1952 on the sands of Brighton Beach/Coney Island. The Dad, Ted Drange, regularly writes comments to this Journal. We used to argue about the existence of God. We still do from time to time. In the good old days, it went like this: Ted spouted an orthodox atheist line and I bombed him with an idea that was new to him – logical positivism, according to which all talk of God was gibberish, theism and atheism alike. It was great fun.

Michael Drange is handsome (takes after Mom, I guess, a beautiful woman from Trinidad). Like all songwriters of the last 30 or so years, he feels he has to sing his songs. Thank goodness, Cole Porter usually resisted the urge. So CLICK HERE and get a sample.

Gresham started it all when he wrote that bad money drives out good. Not a bad start; I propose to supplement his observation with a few of my own.

1. Bad literature drives out good.
2. Bad neighborhoods drive out good.
3. Bad habits drive out good.
4. Bad journalism drives out good.

5. Bad friends displace good.
6. Bad health overtakes good.
7. Bad luck overcomes good.
8. Bad jokes overwhelm good.

I have a choice. I can play the pedant and explain all the above. Alternatively, if they need no explanation, I can justify. Alternatively, again, I can just let it go.

You have a choice. You can shrug and think, “Schmuck.” Alternatively, you can ponder. Alternatively,again, you can say, “So true, so true.”

Let’s do OSCARS.

1. The Best Years Of Our Lives – indisputably the most overrated film in history. This movie stars — everybody. A post WW II celebration of America’s valiant soldiers. The movie is the unchallengeable emperor of all ventures into chauvinism. Not a cliché is omitted. Even has a real no-armed non-actor playing a key role. For his heroism, particularly pretending to act, he is the only person ever to receive two Oscars for one role. The movie itself walked off with 655 Oscars and 1100 nominations. Whenever you are angry at yourself, catch it on TV.

2. Raging Bull This film presupposes you have never seen a prize fight. The fight scenes are a prelude to those in the Rocky series. If inaccurate biopics are your things, don’t overlook this one. If the use of “fucking nigger” (Jake LaMotta’s term of endearment for Ray Robinson) is a word that persuades you that you are in the realm of reality, you will be hit over the head repeatedly with this reminder. Is this movie really awful? Well, consider this: film critics agreed a few years ago that this was the best movie of the 2nd half the 20th century. What more do you need to know?

3. The Bridge on the River Kwai. David Lean’s tribute to himself. A bunch of prisoners in a Nipponese war camp are trying to undermine the efforts of the ever-sly Orientals to win the war. Alec Guinness, caught up in the bridge project, wants to help the inscrutable Japs. He causes lots of mayhem but Bill Holden, still fresh from his triumphant resistance to the charms of Gloria Swanson in her swan song movie, Sunset Boulevard, and his almost-acting job in Stalag 17, cannot be denied. Besides, Bill is on a roll with these movies and Born Yesterday, so he has to come out on top. I love this movie above all others because it features the song, The Colonel Bogie March. At all Madison Square Garden track meets during the 50s, a band egged on the runners to the beat of the Bogie. Eventually, at any time of day or night, I could cue my wife, Natalie, to what I was humming with just the first two notes. Do you have a better reason for liking a movie? It, too, won 655 Oscars.

4. Ordinary People. Much adored by American middle-brows but the Academy scrounges gave it only 300 Oscars. Judd Hirsch plays a psychiatrist who is always on duty. Just like real life. Donald Sutherland plays Mr. Nice Guy while Mary Tyler Moore does a stint as a meannie. All America rushed out to buy a recording of Pachelbel’s Canon in D major after watching the film. Johann’s descendants ought to have sued.

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If you are new to this Journal, go to the search box and enter “Ingmar Bergmann” or “Casablanca” or “movie reviews” for more of my keen analyses.

JoEllen and I went to the movies. When we arrived, we discovered the choices were from among these;

1. Cats & Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore. Cats and dogs make an alliance against spy organization MEOW which threatens to turn the world into a scratching post.
2. Despicable Me: A super-villain threatens to steal the moon but he is thwarted by 3 little orphan girls.
3. Eat, Pray, Love: Somebody embarks on a journey around the world on a quest for self-discovery.
4. Dinner for Schmucks: Several on-the-rise junior executives go to dinner with their boss and act like buffoons to prove which among them is the biggest schmuck, thereby earning a promotion. [That is the title - I swear it.]
5. Marmaduke: The family dog wreaks havoc on the poor folk when they move from one house to another.
6. Predators: Bad guys are brought together to see which of them is preferred as food by a new breed of alien predators.
7. Piranha: Richard Dreyfus and others do battle with man-eating fish.
8. Shrek Forever After: Shrek is sent to a faraway land where Rumpelstiltskin is king.
9. Splice: Genetic engineers fool around until they create a thing that exceeds their most terrifying nightmares.
10. Step-Up: Showdown street dancing among showdown tough guys.
11. Takers: Would-be retired heist experts make one last grab for the show ring.
12. The Twilight Saga – Eclipse: Malicious vampires never get bored.

Faced with such a plethora of goodies, I had no choice but to see at least 30 minutes of each. JoEllen, the dirty rat, went home without seeing any of them.

As all right-thinking persons know, you can’t argue over musical tastes. To prove this, here are three versions of Ol’ Man River.

Der Bingle, Mr. Crosby: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yTqSgCHy9c&feature=related

King of Zoot Suits, Cab Calloway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhkysLd1X34&feature=related

Now, I present William Warfield. Forget this business of you can’t argue over musical taste. NO ONE IN HIS RIGHT MIND CAN PREFER WILLIAM TO BING OR CAB.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XlEzY4tMyg

My afternoon yesterday began inauspiciously. A music major at University of Michigan was in my living room and, because I was groaning, he offered me a lecture on the aesthetics of music. I was groaning because some guy, billed as a singer, was himself groaning as if he was in the early stages of lung cancer. That kind of singing can sometimes work when, out of the tumor-laden throat of the singer, a certain artistic talent is detectable. Consider, as an example, the remarkably successful croaking of Joe Cocker as he warbles through “You are so beautiful.” Not yesterday, however, because the “singer” had a vocal range of three notes and even those few were too much for him to sing on key. To the bargain, he could not manage more than three notes at a time without having to halt to take a breath. Moreover, he held his full notes for a full quarter value. It was downright awful, and I said so.

Music major: Some people might like his singing.
SG: What of it?
MM: That shows musical taste is relative.
SG: Where did you pick up that old chestnut?
MM: I have had four semesters of musicology.
SG: I hope you have a scholarship.

With that, I abandoned the field. Later, in the early evening, some TV political guru announced that there is a rebellion going on across the nation against incumbency. I thought I heard Karl Marx proclaiming, “Rise up, ye enemies of incumbency. You have nothing to lose but elections.” I fondly recalled Harold Pinter saying during the Vietnam War that he wished he had a napalm thrower that could penetrate his TV screen and, after sending some war hawks off to the emergency room, he would scream, “How do you like your war now?”

To conclude my bad day, I watched and listened to Bill Maher in one more of his tedious rants against religion. Then, as if to taunt me more than Bill, his guest, the mayor of Newark, said, “You’re a bit smug about your anti-religion sentiments. I want to know how the finite can dare try to comprehend the infinite.” Good grief, where is Georg Cantor when you really need him?

Georg did not come to my rescue and I trudged off dejectedly to bed but first I helped myself to a nice dose of Zoloft. I slept like a babe.

Here’s Joe singing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlDmslyGmGI

Try not to focus on his Adonis good looks, his clothing borrowed from Mr. Blackwell’s wardrobe or his advanced case of spasticity. Joe really is sui generis, and I love him.