Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Membering and Remembering on Memorial Day (special guest star: Marvin Gardens)
Only a series of unremarkable but serendipitous reminders kept me conscious that yesterday was Memorial Day. Normally, I would have known only by the day off I'd be pleasantly surprised to get, but I left my job a few weeks ago in a blaze of scene, and beyond that the day clocks as many brain hours as Arbor Day (though more than Earth Day, in my defense).
This year marks the first I've made a point to remember on Memorial Day, and it's telling my big behavior change was in the type of movie I rented. I've had in mind to watch Zardoz, the 1974 Sean Connery catastrophe which started out as Hollywood's first attempt to adapt Lord of the Rings, and come up w/ a Hollywood Bizarro Butchery formula for making intriguingly weird cult classics. If Lord of the Rings contains a floating stone idol head that vomits machine guns by the time it makes it to the screen, what giggle-and-hand-clappingly great zany might we wring from, say, King Lear, or the Book of Ezekiel?
But I'd been thinking about MD and the lack of rememberence thereon for a few days by then, so that little ember of responsibility was growing just a bit brighter than usual. I trolled the aisles for awhile. Lingered over Saving Private Ryan, which I've never seen (or Lion King or Braveheart, if you need yet another reason to not respect me), but I don't trust Spielberg after Munich. Finally lucked upon We Were Soldiers, and the three of you reading this know an Insta recommendation is all the good word I need.
The native reviewer on amazon.com lauds the film as paying "tribute to brave men while avoiding the pitfalls of propaganda", but the reviewer quoted below it, the New Yorker's David Denby, can't quite put up with a Vietnam movie that, as IP puts it, doesn't remake Kafka:
A bloody piece of hero worship devoted to an ideal commander-Lieutenant Colonel Harold Moore (Mel Gibson)-and to fighting and dying in the right way. The training is bruising, the leadership inspired, the wives as supportive as deeply rooted oaks. In 1965, early in the war in Vietnam, Moore leads units of the Army's Seventh Cavalry against a much larger North Vietnamese force. Mel Gibson is leathery but quick and alert, his eyes darting this way and that. When he runs around from one part of the perimeter to another, his M-16 blazing, the movie is exciting in a rudimentary, gung-ho way. The writer-director Randall Wallace stages much of the combat at very close range, with masses of North Vietnamese infantry hurling themselves against American riflemen. Recapitulating the many pictures made in the forties and fifties which portrayed the Americans as good and simple people fighting for a just cause, Wallace and Gibson have taken Vietnam out of history-essentially, they have assimilated it into the Second World War. (emphasis added)
I've heard two stories about this film, and Denby's take is in the minority. The other perspective I get mostly from the DVD itself, but also from amazon's first customer review; namely, that of all Vietnam flicks, this is the one that gets right what it was like, and what sort of men and families were involved.
And the film's story is almost objectionably simple: Earnest young men in the just-barely-pre-radicalized '60s, led by an earnest man twice their age and a course-but-sincere gentleman another decade older get called to war, do their damndest to keep each other alive, while the wives they left home do their best to support each other. No innovative plot, no clever storytelling. There's grit, but the film doesn't glory in how unafraid of grit it is. All it has to say about Vietnam is how honorable everyone fighting was (including respect for the North Vietnamese so genuine I teared up [not that that was the only time my face came down with bitch-leak]).
What I'm getting at is this. I'm only recently learning new reasons to appreciate, to be impressed by movies. The King of Marvin Gardens, for example, I would have dismissed even a few months ago as meager. It's got the "here's how awkward and uncinematic real life really is" voice down pat, but nowhere near as much to say about that awkwardness as that calamitous symphony of human nuance, Glengarry Glen Ross, a contrast that would have earned Marvin Gardens demerits in my eyes then. Also, in my old eyes, the story doesn't really go anywhere. Yes, sad things happen in real life and exploits don't always end in victory. So what? Is that really worth making a thousand movies about? And why do they all seem like they think they're the first?
BUT, watching movies to get perspective on the Boomer Bible has opened my whole face. For all its trappings of a bleak 70s movie that, in standing in contrast to the type of movie and storytelling that came before it, glories in pointlessness, KOMG has a moral, of all things, and a damn good one at that. GIST AND SPOILER: Jack Nicholson plays a Philly late-night radio personality who tells bleak personal anecdotes-- a Boomer Jean Shepherd, kind of. His inept hustler brother, Bruce Dern, calls him down to Atlantic City one day to get him in on a Hawaiian real estate deal. Of course, their basically is no deal, so Jack, Bruce, Bruce's girl, and her daughter (step-daughter?) have love triangles that don't quite congeal and typically Boomer exploits fueled by foolish fantasies, and aren't all those typical fantasies foolish, seeing as how life isn't a movie and things don't work out so easily and no one gets to be a movie star in real life? How true, how true. I don't know how Atlantic City looks in reality, but in this movie it looks either cast or made up as archetype of just this point.
But there's kind of a twist: at the end, during another halting, proto-Mamet conversation, Bruce's girl, played by Ellen Burstyn, grabs Bruce's revolver, portrayed up to this point as a laughable male power fantasy, and shoots Bruce dead in what w/o a gun would have been a simple lashing out.
Jack comes home and does a broadcast about the debacle. He ends it like this:
...all seemed harmless. No sense in not going along for the ride, not enjoying the games. That's what the trip seemed to be about.... If the goals didn't seem serious for moments, then certainly nothing more serious could happen. Maybe there would even be a trip to blue Hawaii. I certainly didn't wanna stop it. But in the fun house, how do you know who's really crazy? How do you know if it's supposed to be you that stops it, right now? (starts sobbing) And that you don't know how to stop it? The gun was (pause) always w/ the water pistols. (ea)
Had I seen this the beginning of the year, I would have just sneered at it. Bleak movies suck, screw them. Waaa. End of story.
The previous 3 or 4 paragraphs should go inside parentheses, or under an asterisk, but I'm behind on my BB movie reviews and so have a couple birds to kill w/ this post. What I'm saying is, I'm only now in a mental position to appreciate We Were Soldiers despite it not being concerned w/ the things I'm immediately interested in. WWS is a film surprising and moving in its distinctly American humility, brotherly love, and open goodness. The only fault I find is in the editing: Every Deleted Scene should have been left in, "flow" be damned. I defy you to watch the church outtake and tell me you don't feel a fist in your throat.
Since I didn't really have enough in my head to properly memorialize and reflect, I had to learn this Memorial Day. Call me crazy, but I saw a movie that was great education. InstaPunk had a more exciting MD weekend than me, but I did OK for myself.
I'll close w/ a quote from the Amazon customer review: [Randy, who served two tours] He was silent through the film, and when we left the theatre I asked what he thought. He said, "They finally got it. That's what it was like. All the details are right. The actors were just like the men I knew. They looked like that and they talked like that. And the army wives too, they really were like that, at least every one I ever knew." [Then] he was silent for a long time. At last he said, "You remember the scene where the guy tries to pick up a burn victim by the legs and all the skin slides off? Something like that happened to me once. It was at a helicopter crash. I went to pick him up and all the skin just slid right off. It looked just like that, too. I've never told any one about it."
This year marks the first I've made a point to remember on Memorial Day, and it's telling my big behavior change was in the type of movie I rented. I've had in mind to watch Zardoz, the 1974 Sean Connery catastrophe which started out as Hollywood's first attempt to adapt Lord of the Rings, and come up w/ a Hollywood Bizarro Butchery formula for making intriguingly weird cult classics. If Lord of the Rings contains a floating stone idol head that vomits machine guns by the time it makes it to the screen, what giggle-and-hand-clappingly great zany might we wring from, say, King Lear, or the Book of Ezekiel?
But I'd been thinking about MD and the lack of rememberence thereon for a few days by then, so that little ember of responsibility was growing just a bit brighter than usual. I trolled the aisles for awhile. Lingered over Saving Private Ryan, which I've never seen (or Lion King or Braveheart, if you need yet another reason to not respect me), but I don't trust Spielberg after Munich. Finally lucked upon We Were Soldiers, and the three of you reading this know an Insta recommendation is all the good word I need.
The native reviewer on amazon.com lauds the film as paying "tribute to brave men while avoiding the pitfalls of propaganda", but the reviewer quoted below it, the New Yorker's David Denby, can't quite put up with a Vietnam movie that, as IP puts it, doesn't remake Kafka:
A bloody piece of hero worship devoted to an ideal commander-Lieutenant Colonel Harold Moore (Mel Gibson)-and to fighting and dying in the right way. The training is bruising, the leadership inspired, the wives as supportive as deeply rooted oaks. In 1965, early in the war in Vietnam, Moore leads units of the Army's Seventh Cavalry against a much larger North Vietnamese force. Mel Gibson is leathery but quick and alert, his eyes darting this way and that. When he runs around from one part of the perimeter to another, his M-16 blazing, the movie is exciting in a rudimentary, gung-ho way. The writer-director Randall Wallace stages much of the combat at very close range, with masses of North Vietnamese infantry hurling themselves against American riflemen. Recapitulating the many pictures made in the forties and fifties which portrayed the Americans as good and simple people fighting for a just cause, Wallace and Gibson have taken Vietnam out of history-essentially, they have assimilated it into the Second World War. (emphasis added)
I've heard two stories about this film, and Denby's take is in the minority. The other perspective I get mostly from the DVD itself, but also from amazon's first customer review; namely, that of all Vietnam flicks, this is the one that gets right what it was like, and what sort of men and families were involved.
And the film's story is almost objectionably simple: Earnest young men in the just-barely-pre-radicalized '60s, led by an earnest man twice their age and a course-but-sincere gentleman another decade older get called to war, do their damndest to keep each other alive, while the wives they left home do their best to support each other. No innovative plot, no clever storytelling. There's grit, but the film doesn't glory in how unafraid of grit it is. All it has to say about Vietnam is how honorable everyone fighting was (including respect for the North Vietnamese so genuine I teared up [not that that was the only time my face came down with bitch-leak]).
What I'm getting at is this. I'm only recently learning new reasons to appreciate, to be impressed by movies. The King of Marvin Gardens, for example, I would have dismissed even a few months ago as meager. It's got the "here's how awkward and uncinematic real life really is" voice down pat, but nowhere near as much to say about that awkwardness as that calamitous symphony of human nuance, Glengarry Glen Ross, a contrast that would have earned Marvin Gardens demerits in my eyes then. Also, in my old eyes, the story doesn't really go anywhere. Yes, sad things happen in real life and exploits don't always end in victory. So what? Is that really worth making a thousand movies about? And why do they all seem like they think they're the first?
BUT, watching movies to get perspective on the Boomer Bible has opened my whole face. For all its trappings of a bleak 70s movie that, in standing in contrast to the type of movie and storytelling that came before it, glories in pointlessness, KOMG has a moral, of all things, and a damn good one at that. GIST AND SPOILER: Jack Nicholson plays a Philly late-night radio personality who tells bleak personal anecdotes-- a Boomer Jean Shepherd, kind of. His inept hustler brother, Bruce Dern, calls him down to Atlantic City one day to get him in on a Hawaiian real estate deal. Of course, their basically is no deal, so Jack, Bruce, Bruce's girl, and her daughter (step-daughter?) have love triangles that don't quite congeal and typically Boomer exploits fueled by foolish fantasies, and aren't all those typical fantasies foolish, seeing as how life isn't a movie and things don't work out so easily and no one gets to be a movie star in real life? How true, how true. I don't know how Atlantic City looks in reality, but in this movie it looks either cast or made up as archetype of just this point.
But there's kind of a twist: at the end, during another halting, proto-Mamet conversation, Bruce's girl, played by Ellen Burstyn, grabs Bruce's revolver, portrayed up to this point as a laughable male power fantasy, and shoots Bruce dead in what w/o a gun would have been a simple lashing out.
Jack comes home and does a broadcast about the debacle. He ends it like this:
...all seemed harmless. No sense in not going along for the ride, not enjoying the games. That's what the trip seemed to be about.... If the goals didn't seem serious for moments, then certainly nothing more serious could happen. Maybe there would even be a trip to blue Hawaii. I certainly didn't wanna stop it. But in the fun house, how do you know who's really crazy? How do you know if it's supposed to be you that stops it, right now? (starts sobbing) And that you don't know how to stop it? The gun was (pause) always w/ the water pistols. (ea)
Had I seen this the beginning of the year, I would have just sneered at it. Bleak movies suck, screw them. Waaa. End of story.
The previous 3 or 4 paragraphs should go inside parentheses, or under an asterisk, but I'm behind on my BB movie reviews and so have a couple birds to kill w/ this post. What I'm saying is, I'm only now in a mental position to appreciate We Were Soldiers despite it not being concerned w/ the things I'm immediately interested in. WWS is a film surprising and moving in its distinctly American humility, brotherly love, and open goodness. The only fault I find is in the editing: Every Deleted Scene should have been left in, "flow" be damned. I defy you to watch the church outtake and tell me you don't feel a fist in your throat.
Since I didn't really have enough in my head to properly memorialize and reflect, I had to learn this Memorial Day. Call me crazy, but I saw a movie that was great education. InstaPunk had a more exciting MD weekend than me, but I did OK for myself.
I'll close w/ a quote from the Amazon customer review: [Randy, who served two tours] He was silent through the film, and when we left the theatre I asked what he thought. He said, "They finally got it. That's what it was like. All the details are right. The actors were just like the men I knew. They looked like that and they talked like that. And the army wives too, they really were like that, at least every one I ever knew." [Then] he was silent for a long time. At last he said, "You remember the scene where the guy tries to pick up a burn victim by the legs and all the skin slides off? Something like that happened to me once. It was at a helicopter crash. I went to pick him up and all the skin just slid right off. It looked just like that, too. I've never told any one about it."
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Remember the Man Show?
I couldn't stand it either. Adam Carolla in general stuck in my craw for years as the obnoxious dick-joker who constantly interrupted Dr. Drew's sound advice (which always, always culminated in "seek counseling, but usually had some good insight leading up to that) w/ detailed reports of his masturbation frequency.
Sometime last year, I turned the corner on the Ace-Man. I don't remember when or why I first listened to his new morning radio show, taking over for Stern on regular radio on the west coast, but I did and I loved it. Gone are the Man Show frat-boy jerkings-off-- or I should say they show up a frequently as they did on Loveline, but now that he's running a show instead of acting as sidekick, he has to talk about other things the rest of the time. Lucky for the listening public, the only conversation topic that can keep his interest for 4 hours a morning is the fumbles and shortcomings of the world he lives in. Think Dave Barry, but w/ a pointed fist instead of a goofy shrug, and you'll get the idea. He has the dick-n-fart sense of humor, but his show's not about that, which makes him unique in non-pundit radio right now, as far as anyone knows.
(Didn't there use to be a whole type of entertainer who would talk and write about these sorts of things? What were they called?)
Yesterday he went off on cartoon dudes, which prompted this entry. You can get more on the Rant of the Day page, which may not be long for this world, since it's no longer linked to from the main page. I trust this guy more than any tool pundit on the AM dial. Give a listen, you'll see why.
EXTRA: This is the news segment from Friday, a good sampler of why the show's better than anything I can think of on the air. The girl is newsgirl Teresa Strasser (smart, but damaged) and the gravel voice is none other than Danny Bonaduce (bright, but damaged). Inane PSAs are a favorite topic of the show, and this rant is a good primer.
UPDATE: Turns out the second news segment was more purely platonic-- plus Jersey governor Johnny Crashtime gets called out.
Sometime last year, I turned the corner on the Ace-Man. I don't remember when or why I first listened to his new morning radio show, taking over for Stern on regular radio on the west coast, but I did and I loved it. Gone are the Man Show frat-boy jerkings-off-- or I should say they show up a frequently as they did on Loveline, but now that he's running a show instead of acting as sidekick, he has to talk about other things the rest of the time. Lucky for the listening public, the only conversation topic that can keep his interest for 4 hours a morning is the fumbles and shortcomings of the world he lives in. Think Dave Barry, but w/ a pointed fist instead of a goofy shrug, and you'll get the idea. He has the dick-n-fart sense of humor, but his show's not about that, which makes him unique in non-pundit radio right now, as far as anyone knows.
(Didn't there use to be a whole type of entertainer who would talk and write about these sorts of things? What were they called?)
Yesterday he went off on cartoon dudes, which prompted this entry. You can get more on the Rant of the Day page, which may not be long for this world, since it's no longer linked to from the main page. I trust this guy more than any tool pundit on the AM dial. Give a listen, you'll see why.
EXTRA: This is the news segment from Friday, a good sampler of why the show's better than anything I can think of on the air. The girl is newsgirl Teresa Strasser (smart, but damaged) and the gravel voice is none other than Danny Bonaduce (bright, but damaged). Inane PSAs are a favorite topic of the show, and this rant is a good primer.
UPDATE: Turns out the second news segment was more purely platonic-- plus Jersey governor Johnny Crashtime gets called out.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Movies 1
I quit my job not two days after I activated my Blockbuster Online account. Why not Netflix? Because for every mail disc I return to the store, I get a free rental off the shelf AND the next flick in my queue gets sent as soon as it's scanned (shaves a day off waiting for the thing to get to them in the mail), which keeps me close to force-fed in free DVDs. If you have a Cockbuster in walking distance, I highly recommend.
Boomerbible.com has had BB hints and aids for years. A relatively recent companion to the Books That Help page is Movies That Help*. More recently, I checked in on the page after ignoring it for a long while, and was surprised and pleased to find it not only still there, but about doubled-- Thomas Crown and Flesh used to be the last two movies there, and a few new entries have been slipped in earlier in the timeline.
Now that I've got all this free time, what else is a full-time writer to do but work his way through the list?
Of the 32 films, I'd only seen 3 (in full) on my own: Clockwork Orange, Thomas Crown, and Network. I was probably just too young to appreciate the chunk of 2001 I saw, and I'm gonna really have to disabuse myself of the notion that movies should always be entertaining if I wanna choke down any portion of The Greatest Story Ever Told again.
From these and from what I know already about TBB, I'm expecting two types of hints: insights into the Boomer worldview, like King of Kings, and more explicit morals, like Thomas Crown's explanation (if you can call it that: "...the system.") why he robs all those banks.
The first few movies in my queue have trickled in the last few days. First up-- as in next post-- The King of Marvin Gardens.
*there's rumors of a music list too, but it hasn't turned up.
Boomerbible.com has had BB hints and aids for years. A relatively recent companion to the Books That Help page is Movies That Help*. More recently, I checked in on the page after ignoring it for a long while, and was surprised and pleased to find it not only still there, but about doubled-- Thomas Crown and Flesh used to be the last two movies there, and a few new entries have been slipped in earlier in the timeline.
Now that I've got all this free time, what else is a full-time writer to do but work his way through the list?
Of the 32 films, I'd only seen 3 (in full) on my own: Clockwork Orange, Thomas Crown, and Network. I was probably just too young to appreciate the chunk of 2001 I saw, and I'm gonna really have to disabuse myself of the notion that movies should always be entertaining if I wanna choke down any portion of The Greatest Story Ever Told again.
From these and from what I know already about TBB, I'm expecting two types of hints: insights into the Boomer worldview, like King of Kings, and more explicit morals, like Thomas Crown's explanation (if you can call it that: "...the system.") why he robs all those banks.
The first few movies in my queue have trickled in the last few days. First up-- as in next post-- The King of Marvin Gardens.
*there's rumors of a music list too, but it hasn't turned up.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Date Test: Grading (continued)
1944 - D-Day. That's right. Battle of the Bulge was in December, but I'm guessing that wasn't what the date referred to.
1836 - Alamo.
399 BC - Death of Socrates.
1564 - Another head scratcher. Bill Shakespeare born, John Calvin died. Conquistadors, maybe?
33 - DING.
1871 - Chicago Fire.
337 - Constantine dies.
1848 - DING!
323 BC - Alexander dies, Babylon partitioned.
1452 - John Talbot, I guess. Leo Davinci, Richard the Third, and James III all born this year.
1789 - DING.
1660 - John Thurloe?
1763 - Treaty of Paris.
1849 - Gold rush. That's a fumble.
So, do I pass?
Since we're not counting 1984, there's 49 dates on the test. I got 18 1/2 DINGS. %38.
Final Grade: BIG F.
Then, out of the blue, Patrick did receive some indication of where bottom was. After giving this test, he was collared by one of the female students, who urgently requested to meet with him privately. He did so the next morning, in the school library. She had a terrible personal story to relate. As the child of abusive parents, she had been moved from place to place all her life and had never attended school before being put in a foster home three years before. Since then she had been working feverishly to make up the lost time and to conceal her lack of schooling from everyone but the school administration. She was in a panic when she spoke to Patrick because she was certain that the five-name exercise had finally blown her cover. Thus, she wanted to explain to Patrick why she had done so miserably on the test. Patrick tried to console her. The truth was that her test paper was indistinguishable from the others, except that it may have been marginally better than most.
So this was bottom. High school seniors fared no better than a girl who hadn't been to school for the first fourteen years of her life.
1836 - Alamo.
399 BC - Death of Socrates.
1564 - Another head scratcher. Bill Shakespeare born, John Calvin died. Conquistadors, maybe?
33 - DING.
1871 - Chicago Fire.
337 - Constantine dies.
1848 - DING!
323 BC - Alexander dies, Babylon partitioned.
1452 - John Talbot, I guess. Leo Davinci, Richard the Third, and James III all born this year.
1789 - DING.
1660 - John Thurloe?
1763 - Treaty of Paris.
1849 - Gold rush. That's a fumble.
So, do I pass?
Since we're not counting 1984, there's 49 dates on the test. I got 18 1/2 DINGS. %38.
Final Grade: BIG F.
Then, out of the blue, Patrick did receive some indication of where bottom was. After giving this test, he was collared by one of the female students, who urgently requested to meet with him privately. He did so the next morning, in the school library. She had a terrible personal story to relate. As the child of abusive parents, she had been moved from place to place all her life and had never attended school before being put in a foster home three years before. Since then she had been working feverishly to make up the lost time and to conceal her lack of schooling from everyone but the school administration. She was in a panic when she spoke to Patrick because she was certain that the five-name exercise had finally blown her cover. Thus, she wanted to explain to Patrick why she had done so miserably on the test. Patrick tried to console her. The truth was that her test paper was indistinguishable from the others, except that it may have been marginally better than most.
So this was bottom. High school seniors fared no better than a girl who hadn't been to school for the first fourteen years of her life.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Date Test: Grading
First off, here's the naked list for those who want to take the test:
1776 -
1812 -
1860 -
1914 -
1941 -
1066 -
1215 -
1640 -
1688 -
753 BC -
44 BC -
476 -
1453 -
1783 -
1865 -
1799 -
1918 -
1945 -
1820 -
1815 -
1917 -
1500 BC -
1912 -
1916 -
1588 -
1929 -
2001 million BC -
1348 -
1607 -
1877 -
1788 -
1898 -
0 -
1984 -
"Four thousand and some BC" -
1919 -
1944 -
1836 -
399 BC -
1564 -
33 -
1871 -
337 -
1848 -
323 BC -
1452 -
1789 -
1660 -
1763 -
1849 -
Now, here's the answers. Ones I got right (or right enough) get a DING, others get corrected.
Checked it as simply as I could: Went to Wikipedia, looked up the year. BLAM:
1776 - Yeah, DING.
1812 - DING. I was right about the post-treaty battle being the Battle of New Orleans, too. Good guess. Andrew Jackson was the general in that one, turns out.
1860 - Uh, I looked it up and I'm still not sure. It's either Lincoln winning the Presidency on Nov 6, or it's South Carolina seceding from the union on Dec 20.
1914 - DING.
1941 - DING.
1066 - "Battle of Hastings, fought between King Harold II of England and Duke William of Normandy. Harold is allegedly killed by an arrow to the eye and William is victorious." El Cid died in 1099, is what I was thinking of.
1215 - DING. Still only know it was something to do w/ the King having less power, for the first time ever.
1640 - Short Parliament and Long Parliament? Portuguese independence? No clue.
1688 - Glorious Revolution, is what that was.
753 BC - Rome founded, or so the story goes.
44 BC - Julius Caesar assassinated.
476 - "September 4 - Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, is deposed by Odoacer. Traditionally this was regarded as the date of the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the European Dark Ages; historians now consider it to be essentially insignificant." OK.
1453 - Printing press invented. I'm stupid.
1783 - American Revolution ends, Treaty of Paris signed. Let's call that a DING, even though we all know I got lucky.
1865 - DING.
1799 - Napoleon takes power, first as co-emperor in name only, then stops pretending.
1918 - Wait, WWI ended this year? So what the hell is 1919?
1945 - DING.
1820 - Missouri Compromise.
1815 - Waterloo. (Battle of New Orleans on Jan 8, incidentally)
1917 - DING, but it was more complex than I described. Lennin didn't just shoot the Czar in the head and take over.
1500 BC - "Date of the Biblical Exodus, according to Simcha Jacobovich in the documentary Exodus Decoded."
1912 - DING
1916 - Uh... Battle of the Somme? Probably.
1588 - DING, but I know nothing further.
1929 - DING
2001 million BC - DING
1348 - Black Death begins, basically.
1607 - JAMESTOWN. I knew that. They even have the banner ads lately. I'm stupid.
1877 - This must be the Compromise of 1877. Reconstruction ends.
1788 - New Orleans fire?
1898 - Right about the lease, wrong about them taking it over (happened 60 years before). Spanish-American War is the right answer anyway.
0 - DING
1984 - I suspect this is more than a reference to the book, so I'm neither going to DING myself or count this one towards my final grade.
"Four thousand and some BC" - Um, Sumeria?
1919 - Treaty of Versailles. Half-DING.
And we'll put the rest of this test to bed tomorrow. PBS is calling...
1776 -
1812 -
1860 -
1914 -
1941 -
1066 -
1215 -
1640 -
1688 -
753 BC -
44 BC -
476 -
1453 -
1783 -
1865 -
1799 -
1918 -
1945 -
1820 -
1815 -
1917 -
1500 BC -
1912 -
1916 -
1588 -
1929 -
2001 million BC -
1348 -
1607 -
1877 -
1788 -
1898 -
0 -
1984 -
"Four thousand and some BC" -
1919 -
1944 -
1836 -
399 BC -
1564 -
33 -
1871 -
337 -
1848 -
323 BC -
1452 -
1789 -
1660 -
1763 -
1849 -
Now, here's the answers. Ones I got right (or right enough) get a DING, others get corrected.
Checked it as simply as I could: Went to Wikipedia, looked up the year. BLAM:
1776 - Yeah, DING.
1812 - DING. I was right about the post-treaty battle being the Battle of New Orleans, too. Good guess. Andrew Jackson was the general in that one, turns out.
1860 - Uh, I looked it up and I'm still not sure. It's either Lincoln winning the Presidency on Nov 6, or it's South Carolina seceding from the union on Dec 20.
1914 - DING.
1941 - DING.
1066 - "Battle of Hastings, fought between King Harold II of England and Duke William of Normandy. Harold is allegedly killed by an arrow to the eye and William is victorious." El Cid died in 1099, is what I was thinking of.
1215 - DING. Still only know it was something to do w/ the King having less power, for the first time ever.
1640 - Short Parliament and Long Parliament? Portuguese independence? No clue.
1688 - Glorious Revolution, is what that was.
753 BC - Rome founded, or so the story goes.
44 BC - Julius Caesar assassinated.
476 - "September 4 - Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, is deposed by Odoacer. Traditionally this was regarded as the date of the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the European Dark Ages; historians now consider it to be essentially insignificant." OK.
1453 - Printing press invented. I'm stupid.
1783 - American Revolution ends, Treaty of Paris signed. Let's call that a DING, even though we all know I got lucky.
1865 - DING.
1799 - Napoleon takes power, first as co-emperor in name only, then stops pretending.
1918 - Wait, WWI ended this year? So what the hell is 1919?
1945 - DING.
1820 - Missouri Compromise.
1815 - Waterloo. (Battle of New Orleans on Jan 8, incidentally)
1917 - DING, but it was more complex than I described. Lennin didn't just shoot the Czar in the head and take over.
1500 BC - "Date of the Biblical Exodus, according to Simcha Jacobovich in the documentary Exodus Decoded."
1912 - DING
1916 - Uh... Battle of the Somme? Probably.
1588 - DING, but I know nothing further.
1929 - DING
2001 million BC - DING
1348 - Black Death begins, basically.
1607 - JAMESTOWN. I knew that. They even have the banner ads lately. I'm stupid.
1877 - This must be the Compromise of 1877. Reconstruction ends.
1788 - New Orleans fire?
1898 - Right about the lease, wrong about them taking it over (happened 60 years before). Spanish-American War is the right answer anyway.
0 - DING
1984 - I suspect this is more than a reference to the book, so I'm neither going to DING myself or count this one towards my final grade.
"Four thousand and some BC" - Um, Sumeria?
1919 - Treaty of Versailles. Half-DING.
And we'll put the rest of this test to bed tomorrow. PBS is calling...
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