busyI also share the sentiment about some things being more impressive when you know how they work. I have a general understanding of how magicians "load" something by hiding it on their person. Balls, scarves, doves ... I once saw a guy produce a live macaw, and then moments later, another one. How the fuck do you load a macaw? Or take the late, great Ed Marlo who manipulated cards. You could watch him demonstrate a sleight, but when he did it at full speed, there was nothing to see. His hands just went faster than the human eye. That's impressive.
Robin Williams was like that. He was funny at the speed of light. He was so talented, so skilled, that he made being funny look effortless.
August 16 2014, 05:09:25 UTC 6 years ago
I remember what a certain punk pixie rocker told us about that, though.... words to the effect of "You know that ohshitohshitoshit moment [a certain popular at the time character] has just before that first chord? That's me. Every. Time."
Emotional sleight of hand, at full speed. You *cannot* see it from as far away as the front row, in an ordinary venue.
I had the privilege last weekend of seeing her a lot closer than that, and doing improv, something she doesn't normally do. For once the glamour wasn't there, and you could *see* the concentration.... That said? best I have *ever* seen her play.
I hope the angels are standing on their desks this night.
August 16 2014, 18:48:27 UTC 6 years ago
Mr. Keating. It's tough, keeping the horses (mares and stallions) in the corral when they are Not Quite ready to go off on their own -- that was
Mr. Keating's downfall. But he stood for all the young yearn for.
And Robin Williams the professional had many things to say, but there was something fatal about Robin Williams the person that apparently we didn't get to see. So it leaves me with this ...
... he now reminds me of Hemingway. Lots of good stuff, and then
a "What the...?" suicide.
He helped launch Whoopi Goldberg's career. Hosted the early "Comic Relief" charity telethons.
A good man.
Thoughts
August 16 2014, 19:19:47 UTC 6 years ago
Mr. Keating's downfall. But he stood for all the young yearn for. <<
Total tangent from the original topic, but I think containing young people is destructive. There's an urge that kicks on with puberty -- typically around 12-13 -- to go away from the parents, establish an individual identity, and start making a life of their own. It's meant to get young adults out of the next and spread the species around. But primates are troop animals, so that drive shuts off a while later, to keep from scattering everyone too far. Typically it quits in the late teens or early twenties. Which means if they haven't separated and set up on their own by then, a lot of them never will. They can't; the motile force isn't there anymore. If you brake while an engine is revving forward, you can strip the gears. And then you wind up with all these boomarang kids. You've taught them that they're not allowed to do things on their own, so they don't. They come home and just sit there, because that's what you trained them to do. Now that you've changed your mind about what you want from them, it's too late. You get what you made.
Re: Thoughts
August 17 2014, 14:07:35 UTC 6 years ago Edited: August 17 2014, 14:09:26 UTC
...-se Robin Williams was facing a new challenge, a challenge like you've described. The "He Was Always On" talk we've heard, about how he never showed his real person, was going to be hard to maintain when his body was failing.
There are ways to do that; someone mentioned Michael J. Fox and HIS parkinsons, and Williams could perhaps have emulated him.
And as another solution, was there anything wrong with a retirement? Maybe he was broke, or maybe he thought that he had so little to go on he was broke, but ... there is the possibility that he did not have the simple skill of "slowing down and adjusting".
There are peaceful herds in which the old and infirm stay near the center and live on a while. If the herd has to move, the old and infirm find themselves on the trailing edge, where the predators like to hunt, but that is not the same as suicide.
Then there are cultures where the opposite happens, the old may decide, at some time, to not be a burden and so they go out into the woods and die by themselves.
Maybe I ran off at the mouth there, when you have said some of this more eloquently. As in:
"if they haven't" learned how to retire "and set up" to retire quietly "on their own by" retirement time, maybe they "never will."
and
Someone "taught them that they're not allowed to" just "come home and just sit there, because that's what you trained them" not "to do. Now that" it is retirement time and "you've changed your mind about what you want from" yourself, that is, just adapt to what God has handed you, "it's too late. You get what you made." A man who doesn't want to slow down or accept his new limitations, and whose depression tells him that he'd rather die.
(But on the original tangent, my take is that when a group of thirty people are forced to goosestep together through the school system at the same rate, based pretty much solely on their age being the same, then some have trouble keeping up, some are hurt being held back .......... and ... it just makes more sense to give each of them individual training and let them move forward at their own speed and move out of the corral when they are ready. But that is inconvenient for the school system. Home schooling is better.)