Monday, September 15, 2014

PSA

It's Monday and it's a pretty slow day, so far.  We've read the overnight mail and made our blog rounds, the upshot bein' we have nothing... zero, zilch, nada... that piques our interest enough to create a post.  So, here we are... reduced to talking about what we watched on teevee last night.  Not that that's a bad thing, mind you, coz this is what was on last evening at El Casa Inmóvil De Pennington:


That would be a screenshot of episode one of The Roosevelts, another tour de force from Ken Burns.  Last night's event featured parts one and two of the seven-part film, which runs all week on PBS.  You can watch all seven episodes here, including the ones scheduled to run all this week (a fact I find middling-strange: why would PBS want to dilute their audience by allowing them to watch episodes before they're broadcast?).  I'll be tuning in tonight and the rest of the week to watch the remainder of the series which, if subsequent episodes are as good as last evening's, promises to be the best thing on teevee this year.

The Roosevelts is "can't miss" teevee, assuming you're an American history buff.  OTOH, you could always go with the flow and watch SpongeBob or the Kardashians, not that there's anything wrong with that.  Much.

11 comments:

  1. I watched it, too.
    Hopefully, I will get to see all of the episodes.

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    1. Didja think it was as good as I intimated?

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    2. I've read some TR bios so there weren't any real surprises.
      I'm thinkin' today he'd be called a RINO.

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    3. In re: RINO: I'm thinkin' you're right where domestic policy is concerned. OTOH, if TR would've been elected in 2008, we'd prolly have about half of the foreign policy-type problems we do now and Tehran would be a pile o' smoking embers. Radioactive embers.

      I read Edmund Morris' "Theodore Rex" a few years back so I've not been surprised, either.

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  2. I also watched it last night. Very well done.

    He was a bit of an a-hole in Cuba. Very courageous, no doubt, but after seeing so many die - many of whom he led to their deaths, vaingloriously - and others maimed and crippled while standing right next to him, he pretty much called it the best day(s) of his life. I'd like to think he may have had some more compassionate inner thoughts, but it pretty much brings me to agreement with Twain's assessment of him. Twain, who met him in-person twice, judged him "clearly insane" and wrote concerning him...

    "Our people have adored this showy charlatan as perhaps no impostor of his brood has been adored since the Golden Calf, so it is to be expected that the Nation will want him back again after he is done hunting other wild animals heroically in Africa, with the safeguard and advertising equipment of a park of artillery and a brass band."

    I hope they go into this in the part shown tonight.

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    1. Well, you kinda sorta got yer wish, Jim, in that Twain was quoted, albeit very briefly.

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  3. Men who loved war15 September, 2014 16:13

    I've read most of the books on Roosevelt and Patton during my life, and it is funny how similar they were. Patton had a squeaky voice that everyone misjudged. Both men loved the thrill of going out and killing something. Especially humans who were arrayed against them and shooting back. You haven't really lived until you smell gunpowder and feel bullets missing you by fractions of a gnats ass. I've felt that when I was hunting in Oregon one fall, and we took about four rounds from another hunter. Dipshit...

    Alas, the only thing thrown my way by the enemy, was SCUD's, and the nearest one was a light-year away (2 blocks). It missed me, and blew-up a car lot in downtown Riyadh. I was selling every piece of aluminum I could get my hands on to Army troops loading-up for the ride to Iraq, and saying they were from a real SCUD :-) I bought a new bicycle with the il-gotten gains when I arrived back in the world. It was stolen withing a week. Life goes on...

    A funny story, one of the first Patriots fired when the war started, mis-fired and went into Riyadh and hit a hotel. What a mess...

    Patton suffered the ignominy of being shot in the ass in WW#1. Well, I personally don't think being shot anywhere by a German is ignominious, but he played it for all it was worth, and got a lot of laughs out of it.

    I'll watch again tonight, as I'm a fan of Burns and his team.

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    1. Interesting stuff! I've never been shot at and even though the experience is supposed to be exhilarating (assuming you're not hit) it's one I'm glad to have missed. I loved the bit about scrap aluminum!

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  4. Thanks, I missed last night, so I'll go watch on line!

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