The Beard

-
I have been nurturing a bit of facial hair since the start of last September's two week road trip. After a little more than a month I am, according to my wife, beginning to look more and more like a cross between a Viking, Ernest Hemingway, and Robert E. Lee.

There is, however, one other late figure of note I think I'm beginning to show some degree of similarity to: Stanley Kubrick. In his later years Mr. Kubrick had a full rich beard and thinning hairline, much like me.

The only difference between him and I is, well, he's well known for cinematic masterpieces such as Sparticus, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket, to name but a few. All nominated and/or won Oscars, BAFTAs, and Golden Globes.

And I'm most certainly not.

What got me started thinking about Kubrick tonight were two science fiction movies, 2001 and Spielberg's film, A. I. Artificial Intelligence, a film Kubrick wanted to direct but never did, and instead collaborated a bit with Spielberg before Kubrick died. I was always fascinated by Kubrick's films, none more so than 2001 (and quite a bit by Dr. Strangelove, truth be told). When A. I. first came out I felt like I was watching a move co-directed by Kubrick's ghost.

I don't know where I'm going with this, so I suppose I should sign off.

Comments

  1. Wolfgang LonienOctober 07, 2012

    Definitely a good one, Bill. A keeper.

    Just shaved mine yesterday - I was beginning to look more like a Taliban ;-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. BillOctober 07, 2012

      Thank you. I let it grow because I got tired shaving. The irony of that is I now need to trade a shaver for a beard trimmer to keep my beard properly shaped.

      Delete

Post a Comment

All comments are checked. Comment SPAM will be blocked and deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

A Decade Long Religious Con Job

-
Image
I rarely write inflammatory (what some might call trolling) titles to a post, but this building you see before you deserves it. I've been seeing this building next to I-4 just east of Altamonte/436 and Crane's Roost for nearly 12 years, and never knew who owned it. Today on a trip up to Lake Mary with my wife I saw it yet again. That's when I told her I wanted to stop by on the way back and poke around the property, and photograph any parts of it if I could. What I discovered was this still unfinished eighteen story (I counted) white elephant, overgrown with weeds and yet still under slow-motion construction. It looks impressive with its exterior glass curtain walls, but that impression is quickly lost when you see the unfinished lower stories and look inside to the unfinished interior spaces. A quick check via Google leads to an article written in 2010 by the Orlando Sentinel about the Majesty Tower. Based on what I read in the article it's owned by SuperChannel
Read more

Ten Reasons to Ignore Ten Reasons to Dump Windows and Use Linux

-
There is a tradition amongst the hard-core Linux aficionados to extol Linux's various virtues as a list of 10 or more reasons to substitute (as in "dump") an existing Windows installation with Linux. There's no reason to point them all out; a simple Google search (" 10 reasons to use Linux ") will provide you with such lists stretching back through the years, as well as hours of entertainment. One very recent list caught my eye over the weekend, published by PCWorld. Their article, " Ten Reasons to Dump Windows and Use Linux ", seems to have hit a nerve with me. Normally I just ignore such journalistic pap, since the majority of it comes courtesy of one ill-informed blog or another (such as this one). But in this instance a "real" publication put some time and journalistic "credibility" into this list, which places it in front of a wider audience than the typical blog poist (again, such as this one). So let's consider al
Read more

Former Eclipse user re-evaluates Eclipse 3.3M5

-
Image
I've been using NetBeans for a while now, starting with version 4.2 in beta. One of NetBeans' key selling points (in my not-so-humble-opinion) is Java GUI building with Matisse . That feature continues to be quite powerful and unrivaled, especially for a free-as-in-beer IDE. I even wrote a lovely paean to the wonders of NetBeans and why I moved away away from Eclipse to NetBeans . Now, it looks like I may have to eat some of those tastefully written words. What you're looking at above is a complete Ruby on Rails project hosted and running within Eclipse 3.3 Milestone 5 on Windows XP. Milestone 5 was released this past Friday, February 9th. I installed it Saturday, and then went on a plugin hunt to fill out additional features and capabilities. Why did I decide to re-install Eclipse, especially a milestone? So that I could get a complete integrated development and test capability in one convenient package for Ruby on Rails. Like a lot of other folks I've been playing
Read more