THE AFI TOP 100 MOVIES

The American Film Institute released their top 100 movies of all-time in celebration of their 100-year anniversary. The list was counted down on TV, and it made me realize how many great movies I had not seen. Truth be told, I have not seen 58 out of the 100. Some of those I’ve never even heard of and I would consider myself somewhat of a movie buff. For some of those 58, it amazes me that I’ve never seen the movie from start to finish. Gone With The Wind. Never seen the whole thing. Can you believe that? How about E.T., or It’s A Wonderful Life, or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Nope. I must be the only person in America who hasn’t seen The Godfather or Goodfellas.

Other observations. I would consider myself a classic movie watcher. I saw Citizen Kane, but I wouldn’t call it the best movie of all-time. I think Casablanca is worthy of #1. I’m surprised Raging Bull ranks so high. My personal #1 movie of all-time, The Graduate, came in at #17. My #2 movie, Shawshank, came in way down at #72. Others in my all-time top 10 that made the list include #33 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, #48 Rear Window, #65 The African Queen, and #75 In The Heat of the Night. Did any of your favorites not make the list? Not surprisingly, my other top 10 movies that didn’t make the list include Garden State, Field of Dreams, Stand By Me, and Die Hard. I’m surprised Rebel Without A Cause didn’t make it. Biggest surprise that DID make it? How about Toy Story making the list at #99. Wow! I loved it, but is it really one of the top 100 movies of all-time?

Lists like this make for great discussion and debate. What are some of your thoughts?


1 CITIZEN KANE
2 GODFATHER, THE
3 CASABLANCA
4 RAGING BULL
5 SINGIN' IN THE RAIN
6 GONE WITH THE WIND
7 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
8 SCHINDLER'S LIST
9 VERTIGO
10 WIZARD OF OZ, THE
11 CITY LIGHTS
12 SEARCHERS, THE
13 STAR WARS
14 PSYCHO
15 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY
16 SUNSET BLVD.
17 GRADUATE, THE
18 GENERAL, THE
19 ON THE WATERFRONT
20 IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
21 CHINATOWN
22 SOME LIKE IT HOT
23 GRAPES OF WRATH, THE
24 E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL
25 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
26 MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON
27 HIGH NOON
28 ALL ABOUT EVE
29 DOUBLE INDEMNITY
30 APOCALYPSE NOW
31 MALTESE FALCON, THE
32 GODFATHER PART II, THE
33 ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST
34 SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
35 ANNIE HALL
36 BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE
37 BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE
38 TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, THE
39 DR. STRANGELOVE
40 SOUND OF MUSIC, THE
41 KING KONG
42 BONNIE AND CLYDE
43 MIDNIGHT COWBOY
44 PHILADELPHIA STORY, THE
45 SHANE
46 IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
47 STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, A
48 REAR WINDOW
49 INTOLERANCE
50 LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, THE
51 WEST SIDE STORY
52 TAXI DRIVER
53 DEER HUNTER, THE
54 M*A*S*H
55 NORTH BY NORTHWEST
56 JAWS
57 ROCKY
58 GOLD RUSH, THE
59 NASHVILLE
60 DUCK SOUP
61 SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS
62 AMERICAN GRAFFITI
63 CABARET
64 NETWORK
65 AFRICAN QUEEN, THE
66 RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
67 WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
68 UNFORGIVEN
69 TOOTSIE
70 CLOCKWORK ORANGE, A
71 SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
72 SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, THE
73 BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID
74 SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE
75 IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
76 FORREST GUMP
77 ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN
78 MODERN TIMES
79 WILD BUNCH, THE
80 APARTMENT, THE
81 SPARTACUS
82 SUNRISE
83 TITANIC
84 EASY RIDER
85 NIGHT AT THE OPERA, A
86 PLATOON
87 12 ANGRY MEN
88 BRINGING UP BABY
89 SIXTH SENSE, THE
90 SWING TIME
91 SOPHIE'S CHOICE
92 GOODFELLAS
93 FRENCH CONNECTION, THE
94 PULP FICTION
95 LAST PICTURE SHOW, THE
96 DO THE RIGHT THING
97 BLADE RUNNER
98 YANKEE DOODLE DANDY
99 TOY STORY
100 BEN-HUR

THE CHRONICLES OF PLANTATION

It’s been about six weeks or so since my return from splendid isolation, and I have to say, not a whole lot has changed which has me thinking about running for cover once again. Remember now, I have what I would consider a simple goal. I’ve dismissed thoughts of finding “The One” and have boiled it down to simply meeting someone I would enjoy hanging out with to share a movie or a dinner or what have you. Easy, huh? Well, not so much. The same sorts of patterns that aggravated and frustrated me in the first place are still, unfortunately, living and breathing. And that’s even before I’ve met anyone. It’s even worse, afterward.

Trying to find a date online is sort of like trying to find a job online. When you job search, you send out resumes to the companies that grab your attention and interest hoping. You cater your resumes to the companies that seemingly fit your needs and vice versa. The response rate sucks, and it can leave you depressed. But on the other hand, companies can actually contact you first. Most of those contacts are junk, but on those rarest of occasions, there might actually be one or two of interest.

And so, with many thanks to JDate and MySpace, I did my search and sent out resume hellos to women I thought I would have a connection with and enjoy meeting. The results? Few and far between naturally, but five returned my emails and, not counting the over-50 crowd that contacted me numerous times, three women actually wrote to me first. So if you’re ready, let me introduce to you (in chronological order) the elite eight:

1 The Scammer
2 The Marathoner
3 The Russian
4 The Reporter
5 The Long Shot
6 The Familiar Face
7 The Rocker
8 The Long Islander

Having already suffered through the West African Virus, I’m pretty good at eliminating profiles that reek of fraud. Scammer was a MySpacer. She had two pix that seemed legit, and her profile had enough detail that didn’t look to intentionally conceal anything. She was cute, 34, a local, an artist, and had an overall nice outlook on life. She said she was half-Norwegian but grew up in Miami. We did the usual exchange of emails and IMs, but during those exchanges, I’d get conflicting information from her and knew I had a fraud on my hands. She said she’d never left the States and grew up in Miami but later conversations said she visited Norway and grew up in Boulder, Colorado. Thing with these stupid scammers is that they can’t remember what they told to who. That’s the beauty of email retention and text logs. It’s all there in black and white. So I waited for her to ask me for money. She told me about her dad’s big inheritance, yada yada yada. I got sick of the B.S. and just ignored her.

Marathoner was a JDater. She actually contacted me. Like I said a rarity especially when you consider she was attractive, a good age (38), a local, and a lawyer. Things moved pretty quickly from email to IM chat to phone call. I didn’t have an immediate connection with her per se, but I thought she was someone I could hang out with. I liked that she asked me to do stuff with her. Problem for me was that I was working nights and weekends and literally didn’t have a minute. I’m sure she got tired of asking and who could blame her?

I contacted The Russian via JDate. I know a few Russian words and phrases which helped me. She was very attractive, 39, a local, divorced with a son. Things moved along nicely up to the phone stage. I thought we had a decent conversation, and it seemed we agreed that we would like to meet each other. The next day, I got no IMs from her. Very unusual. And none the next day and just like that, I basically never heard from her again. Classic internet dating pattern. I guess our first phone conversation scared her off. Who knew? Then out of the blue, a couple of weeks later, I got an offline IM from her. All I saw of the message was something like, “sorry for my silence.” I got a pop up from Yahoo for an upgrade and when I clicked it, her message was gone and I couldn’t retrieve it. Yahoo couldn’t even help me. NEXT!

The Reporter IM’d me from JDate. Once again, I was shocked that she was not fat, ugly, and old. Attractive and 36. She was a local TV reporter for a local Spanish news station. We had some nice IMs and then all of a sudden, she stopped returning mine. Just like The Russian, she vanished forever. Interestingly, I did see her on TV so she WAS who she said she was.

Long Shot grabbed my attention with her music taste. I found her on MySpace. Her age wasn’t listed, mid-thirties I guessed. Divorced, 2 boys that lived with her, a local, RN-background. Her list of music virtually matched mine. Ooh, I was in trouble. And did I mention she was extremely attractive? Trouble with these attractive women, magnified on MySpace, is that they are berated with emails from guys who have nothing better to say than, “You’re hot!” So it’s extremely difficult for me to break through that barrier of trust and prove that I’m just a normal guy that has some wit and intelligence. Thankfully for me, Long Shot believed enough in me to write me back. I’ve since tried to share with her some cool music to which, I think, she has appreciated. To date, we’re still in email stage and honestly, that may be as far as it goes. It sure would be nice to share a cool concert with her, but like I said, that may never happen. But you know me; I’ll not give up easily.

F-Squared (Familiar Face) I recognized from JDate from a couple of years ago only I found her on MySpace. She’s cute, young-looking at 40, a local, well-educated, medical field. So I wrote her and she was nice enough to write back. Me being a writer, I like it when I can get to know women a bit through writing before working up to the phone call stage. But there are no rules out there on the net, and she told me she didn’t like emails and preferred talking. So I gave her my number and waited. Work was once again interfering with my schedule, but she did call me. Only our phone conversation sucked. It was forced; she was boring; I’m sure she thought I was boring. We didn’t seem to have chemistry. I’ve not heard from her since.

My JDate profile reads like this SWM post. And The Rocker totally fit that description on paper. She was cute, tasteful punk rock-look, and even had red hair. She was a JDater whom I contacted. You guys will yell at me cuz she’s young. 30. But she’s divorced and has a kid so I’d say a mature 30. High School teacher, great music taste, but she wasn’t a local. Damn. She lived about 3 ½ hours away. Our first chat was great, full of laughs, sarcasm, and a bit of light sexual innuendo. Each chat was fun. Even our first phone conversation went extremely well. Her personality matched what she had written about herself. A walking contradiction that, as I said, seemed just what I was looking for in a woman. I had a good feeling we might get to meet. Unfortunately, she was in a tough situation being a single mom with little or no help. She talked of moving to Seattle to be with her family. She hadn’t yet made up her mind, but it appeared she too would be a dead end. More on her in a bit.

It looked like for all the world, I’d run into a total dead end. Not totally surprising given my luck. I was seriously considering taking another dose of splendid isolation when literally out of the blue, someone contacted me. As you know, I’d been working late nights and weekends where the days lasted until 1:30 in the morning. I couldn’t just go to bed when I got home so I had to unwind, watch TV, scroll for profiles, whatever. It was around 4:15 in the morning when I got an IM on JDate. Once again, I expected short/fat/ugly/old, but Long Island was far, far from that. She was blonde, young-looking, and very attractive. Of course, I’d accept her IM. Her opening line to me was something like, “My seven-year-old just peed all over my bed. What’s your excuse for being up so late?” I laughed out loud. I told her so and that I hadn’t a good excuse except that sleep wasn’t one of my strong suits. And for the next hour, we a really great conversation. I learned that she was 36, divorced, a high school guidance counselor, ivy league-educated, and really funny. She had it together, lemme tell ya. But with my luck, she lived in, you guessed it, Long Island.

The good vibes continued for nine days. Now up until Long Island, I thought I’d been a really good boy. I hadn’t forward thought about anything or anyone. No thoughts of the future. But with Long Island, that was hard, if not impossible, to ignore. For one thing, she brought it up numerous times about her struggle to choose between allowing herself to take a huge risk with a long distance relationship (LDR) or to simply say goodbye and move on. She kept telling me I scared the shit out of her because our connection was strong yet she didn’t want to relocate or have a LDR. On day nine, she wrote me about it again. We even talked on the phone later that day about it. I could really sense during the call that it was really bothering her. I really felt she was gonna tell me goodbye. Maybe she had planned to but she got interrupted by her kids. She said she was gonna call me back. I never got the call. Instead was an email saying she got ahead of herself and couldn’t do the LDR thing. She apologized and just like that, she was gone. The email stunned me although I sensed it coming. Obviously, I would have preferred a phone call, but perhaps that would have been too hard. In any event, I had forgotten what rejection felt like. Like getting rejected for a job you really wanted, it sucks.

A day later, Rocker told me she was definitely moving. So at the end of the day, when you take 1 thru 8, I ended up with a bunch of failures once again. Unwanted and perhaps unneeded aggravation and frustration once again. Do I really need this? Rejection and disappointment lead me to late night running. It gives me a chance to clear my mind. As I started my run, I thought for sure I was going back to splendid isolation. I mean, who needs to go through all this crap for a lousy date? “That’s it; I quit,” I thought to myself. But before I completed the end of my run at mile two, I had a change of mind. I’m not a quitter, and I’m not going to give up. And so, ladies and gentlemen, the chase continues…

IT WAS 40 YEARS AGO TODAY

On June 16th 1967, Woodstock’s perhaps lesser known predecessor kicked-off with a group called The Association and ended with two days later with the principal organizers of the festival, The Mamas & The Papas. In between, the talent that took the stage was legendary and changed the face of rock and roll.

Mamas & Papas front man John Phillips organized the Monterey International Pop Festival with help from several music industry talents and producers. The result was three days of peace, love, sex, drugs, and of course, rock and roll. Amazingly, there were no arrests. Just 200,000 flower-power ‘children’ sharing the joy of the amazing music talents of Eric Burdon & The Animals, Simon & Garfunkel, Janis Joplin, Steve Miller, Jefferson Airplane, Otis Redding, Buffalo Springfield, The Who, The Dead, and an unknown teenage guitarist by the name of Jimi Hendrix.

It’s obvious the magnitude and the influence these rock and roll legends had on future bands and solo artists. Indeed, Monterey might have been the end of the innocence to 1967’s so-called “Summer of Love.” Times have changed and have gotten a helluva lot more complicated. Watching old footage of these classic music festivals, I often wonder what it would have been like to be there and live the experience. If I had a time machine, being the rock and roll historian that I am, I would definitely visit Monterey and Woodstock. But since I don’t have a time machine, my remote will always stop when I see historical recounts of these wonderful and timeless events relating to perhaps the greatest form of art.

MYSPACED

OK. I’m officially out there now. Wanna check out me out? It’s been three weeks since I put my profile on MySpace. I’ve formed some early opinions. It’s definitely NOT meant for dating. I know it’s obviously geared toward the younger crowd whose main objective might just be to see who can acquire the most friends. Jeez. I review these profiles and scratch my head. Who had 534 friends in their life? Are you serious? I think my over/under is 50. If I see anyone that has over 50 friends, I just do the MTV thing and say, “next.”

What’s my goal here anyway? Well, it would be nice to simply meet someone just to hang out and grab dinner, a movie, a concert, whatever. Am 99.9% sure I’m not gonna find like The One or anything like that (not that I’m even looking for or thinking about that). There are thousands of women in my search range of 30ish-40ish. If I select “Jewish” for religion, that figure goes down to less than 50. And by the time you sort out all the fake models and porn pix (I dunno, maybe 90%?), you’re down to basically 5.

So I take out the “Jewish” and go from there. 1,500 or so women to choose from. Gotta be SOMEONE in that crowd, right? Hmmm, not so sure ‘bout that. Like I said, after you ignore the fake models and porno profiles, you’re basically down to 150. Out of that 150, I found perhaps 10 women I thought I’d enjoy meeting or at the very least, talking to. So I did my thing. I wrote them. Three of them responded. One of the, I’ve come to detect is one of those African guys or girls attempting to rob you blind (story I’m sure to come). That leaves two; one of which I think I might actually get to meet someday. Maybe, maybe not.

Ooh, looky here, I just got another friend request. Lucky me. This one is from Belle. Amber, Belle, Daisy, Trixi, yada yada yada. Each time the profile is the same but with a different name. Denied. I’ve yet to receive an email from anyone real. I take that back. I got a nice note from a guy in Portland who found my blog. So to Jevan, I say thank you. I think, for me, my main use for MySpace will be to keep my finger on the delete button for “friends” like Belle, keep in touch with musicians and bands I enjoy, and change my song to keep my profile fresh. Speaking of which, I think I need to change my song to better represent myspace. Definitely Guns ‘N Roses,’ “Welcome to the Jungle.”