Charlie Chaplin & The Polar Bear

There's a satellite channel that puts on Charlie Chaplin's films, one after another for weeks on end, takes a short break showing some other old films then back again, more of Charlie's films or the same ones repeated. If I don't have anything better to while away some minutes, I would just watch the same films again too, yet another time.

The most recent one I saw was called " The Kid ", where he, the poor man, adopted a little homeless orphan boy in a sorrier state than he was. He and the little boy would scout around in this modest neighbourhood, to find and repair broken window planes to earn a living. The boy would run ahead of him and throw stones at some window to break it, then he would 'happen' to just pass by and offer to repair the window plane. It's naughty and even illegal trickery to earn their living, but spectators including myself would laugh and admire the ingenuity of the man, doing what he could to find his daily bread to survive in hard times, based on the delicious imagination of the star who wrote the script and acted the poor and permanently down on his luck tramp.

Nobody could demonstrate that the US Administration has appropriated Chaplin's idea, not to secure the sandwich of the day, but for the huge profit from the grand scale extraction of petroleum in the area of extreme icy temperature, like Alaska, territory of the Polar Bears. If the world has included these animals in the list of species under danger of extinction, it should not be the Administration not to respect it, and that's how it had established the policy in favour of the polar bears. Up to this point it's on the line of the broken windows of the film.

But the established norm contains clauses that also guarantees no conflict or hindrance to any activities to extract maximum black gold. In other words, the bear is condemned to live in the middle of constant interference of men and machines, but are granted the favour not to be shot. Polar bears are by nature solitary animals. Apart from the few days of the year when they mate, they don't usually even tolerate the company of other bears.

In the film the one that repairs the windows earns a living by breaking them in the first place. Now the all powerful men with their machines are observing the law of protecting the rights of bears but, at the same time, destroying their natural habitat. Not to gain the daily loaf for survival, but to opening up the way for mounting the millions of profit for some people. After all, there are only a few bears whose toes got trodden on.

Tags:Chaplin,TheKid,PolarBears

Current Mood: Blah

Lunching With Mirtha Legrand

A couple of English friends mentioned the longest running British TV Programme being 'Caronation Street', and the longest running theatre play being 'The mouse Trap'. That reminded me of a Spanish TV programme perhaps even longer running.

A couple of years ago, Robert Mur, a foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires who had come over here in Barcelona & was talking about a longest running television programme, called "Lunching with Mirtha Legrand", likely a worldwide record, and was then still running after having then completed 43 years. What's more amazing, hosted during all that time by the same lady presenter, Mirtha Legrand, who had then just celebrated her 84th birthday. At that moment this was also being shown in America.

The TV show started in April 1968, very unusual presentation too. Each and everyday in all these 40 years, at exactly 1pm, she puts on a lunch in her 'house' - fictional, built into the recording studio set - during which the invited guests would be eating, drinking, followed by coffee and cigars, and all the time being interviewed. The guests are professional people in varied fields and backgrounds, but the majority are artists, writers, sportsmen, politicians, scientists, actors and actresses, singers, dancers ... in other words celebrities in today's terms. It had been originally her idea, to make the guests feel truly at home, in cosy environment and at ease. A well fed person is also a happy person and more willing to talk, especially if the wine is good and plenty.

She once invited several wives of Argentinean sportsmen to lunch, of a footballer, a tennis player and a golfer. Sometime during lunch she asked the question that when their husbands had a competition game on, did they have, or perform, any kind of ritual to wish him good luck.

Just like how a good story usually goes, the footballer's wife said she prayed to the name of the Saint which is the name of her husband, the tennis player's wife said she made him wear his lucky shirt. The wife of the golfer (Roberto de Vincenzo) was the last to answer. She said: "Every time before he goes to a competition match, I would kiss his balls".

This was followed by the longest silence in the duration of a mere few seconds before Legrand said: -

"Golf balls, right? "

Tags:tvlunch,football,tennis,golf

Current Mood: Amused