Childish Games

I am a 72yo white woman. I am an American and a Texas. But above all of these adjectives, I am a human being who thinks there should be no reasons to put adjectives in front of my self. Sadly, because of the way this country is being torn apart right now because of adjectives, I feel like I needed to modify myself as I did above if for no reason but to show you that I don’t fit your profile.

I am a supporter of Barack Obama. I am also a fan of NASCAR. I read political books, science fiction, and action thrillers. I am a fan of music, all kinds of music, though hip hop and rap and heavy metal are not things I have in my collection of music. I have faves, but it is not my business to try and convince you all in your own personal listening.

Having said all that, I now want to say that I am DARN PISSED OFF ABOUT ALL THE CHILDISH GAMES YOU TEA PARTIERS AND LOVERS OF MONEY FIRST ARE PLAYING IN YOUR ATTEMPTS TO BRING DOWN BARACK OBAMA. What you need to get into your heads is that we the people, in a huge majority, re-elected him for a reason. And the reason was not to simply show you that we could do it.

We did it because he has great ideas, he loves this country of his birth, he wants to see that everyone who wants a job gets one, that our veterans are taken care of, and that all of the children of this country have a right to an education and health care. What I want one of you to tell me is exactly why you are opposed to any of those things. I don’t think you can. I think this crap that is going on has nothing to do with anything except the fact that we the people chose a black man to carry the torch for us. And in this day and age, this is horrific to you.

So, good Christian people all, pick up your bibles. Quit thinking up scandals to throw at our president long enough to pick up your bibles. Turn the page to one of the letters your St. Paul wrote, I Corinthians, and read chapter 13. Look at what it says. It talks about love (charity in the King James version, which to many is the only true bible), and tells you to put away childish things. What else would you call these little snippets of nastiness going around but childish things. After you have read that one, over and over, turn the pages to another letter your St. Paul wrote, the whole book of Philippians. That whole book/letter is about love. Or what about the second greatest commandment, love thy neighbor as thyself. Well, perhaps it should be more like love your neighbor more than you do yourself.

Is there some reason that you think Obama is not your neighbor? Because he is black? Well, as much as you might want to deny it, he was born of a woman, a white one at that, and as thus is a creation of God. This is a nondeniable truth, unless someone out there thinks he was not born in a normal way.

How stupid is birtherism? Well, it has been used, along with so-called scandals that are being made up because apparently you folks don’t have anything better to do. You don’t want to help anyone, you don’t want your neighbors to have jobs, you want the little girl down the way born to a poor woman, to die of appendicitis, because they cannot afford to pay for an operation. You want little Luke down at the ghetto to not have an education because, golly, he might actually get a job that would allow him to have some dignity. And by damn, you are not going to let little Keeshon have anything because, after all, look at what his name is. That is enough to tell you that he is not worthy of anything. Or is that a little girl? Double whammy.

But you are not only believing all these evil things, you yourself, the tea partier GOPs, are actually forging documents to prove your point. First of all, I think you should all be hung as traitors to this country when you do this. I want you to know that I, personally, will bring citizen charges against every politician who has done such a thing, or committed any other treasonous act such as deciding Obama would have only one term. We got past you on that one. But it is still treason against the president, against the flag, against the nation, and definitely against the majority. I tell you now that I have signed petitions to this goal, and I am working to get McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, Cornyn, Bachman, and many others out of their offices. Unfortunately, as a law abider, I can vote in only one election, and that is in my home state of Texas. So my votes will be going against John Cornyn and Rick Perry, our present governor. I will continue to work for Lloyd Doggett, even though the Gerry-manderers after many years finally managed to take me out of his district, by about two blocks. But I’ll vote against Michael McCaul every time I can. We will bring Texas into the 21st century.

Oh yeah, I, as an older white woman using a walker, would be proud to stand up straight to hold an umbrella over Barack Obama’s head any day, while standing in the rain. Strange enough to me is that you childish folk, who were bitching about the Marine holding the umbrella over Barack’s head, didn’t have anything to say about the Marine holding one over the Turkish PM’s head. Frankly, if Obama had been standing there by himself, he might not have even cared if he stayed dry. His concern was for the Turkish PM, as spoken in his sentence about how he had another suit nearby to change into, but he didn’t know if the PM had the same convenience.

And let us talk about guns. I don’t give a damn how many guns you have, as long as they are not weapons that are best left to the military. I suppose if you are a White Supremacist, you believe you are a well-regulated militia, and therefore worthy of the RPGs you have (initials, BTW, that also refer to roll-playing games). But you regular citizens who love your guns, I suppose your leaving them laying around loaded just anywhere, is your way of showing the world that you can do what you want to. But guess what, you are killing your children. The following is just a very small list of children killed in April by guns that were left lying around just anywhere, and ever worse, being worked on by yourself, WHILE YOUR CHILD WAS WITH YOU.

April 7, 2013: A 4 year old girl was shot by her dad while he was cleaning his gun in Brownwood Texas. She died from her injuries.

April 14, 2013: In Oregon, a 9 year old little girl was playing in her backyard when she was shot by her mom’s boyfriend while he was inside the house, practicing drawing his gun. She died from her injuries.

April 20, 2013: A week later, also in Oregon, a 4 year old boy was accidently shot in the stomach and died from his injuries.

April 22, 2013: In Idaho, a 10 month old baby was shot in the cheek by a 3 year old that found a gun in the glove box. Luckily, this child survived with minor injuries.

April 22, 2013: In Delaware, a 7 year old boy was shot in the hand by his 11 year old brother. He also was lucky and survived his injuries.

April 27′ 2013: A 4 year old boy was shot in the leg by a 10 year old in Virginia. He survived his injuries.

May 2, 2013: In Kentucky a 2 year old little girl was shot by her 5 year old brother with a gun that was just given to him as a gift. She died from her injuries.

May 6, 2013: In Indiana, a 4 year old shot himself in the hand with a gun that he got out of an unlocked safe while his dad was in the walk in closet. He survived his injuries.

May 6, 2013: In Florida, a 3 year old boy shot himself with a gun he found in his uncle’s backpack that was in the room that they were sharing. He died from his injuries.

May 7, 2013: In Texas, a 7 year old boy was shot by his 5 year old little brother while he was taking a bath. He survived his injuries.

May 8, 2013: In Corsicana Texas, a 2 year old boy shot himself in the head with a gun that he found in a night stand. He died from his injuries.

May 11, 2013: In Denton Texas, a 5 year old was shot in the head by an 8 year old friend. He died from his injuries.

May 11, 2013: In Amarillo Texas, a 6 year old boy shot himself in the stomach while visiting relatives. He is expected to survive.

May 14, 2013: In Florida, an 11 year old boy was shot in the neck by a 4 year old. He died from his injuries.

All of these guns were purchased by law abiding citizens and were bought legally. So yes, these people had every right to buy these guns but let me ask you this…..Should they have? Was the price high enough? Is their right to bare arms a bigger priority than their children’s right to live?

(Notice, the list above was searched for, and the last paragraph above, was not done by me – it came from one of my FB Group friends. I copied it over.)

Now about Benghazi. Four times extra security was offered to the embassy in Benghazi. Four times it was turned down. When a bill was offered to Congress for more money for more security for all of the embassies in dangerous places, it was turned down, by the bill-blocking tea-party Representatives. When the attack at Benghazi had begun, there were military units ready to go to their aid, but the Defense Department kept them from going because in most cases, they were too far away to have done any good. So there was a mix-up over what happened, and well, if you weren’t there, confusion would result. But you chose to attack the representative who was given a script of what to say. It was not complete, but everyone wanted news RIGHT NOW, so they did the best they could. I suspect Susan was attacked because, oh yeah, she was black. Just remember, there were about a dozen attacks against US embassies under GWB, where at least 60 people died, and I don’t remember us, the liberal Democrats, making a fuss about how badly GWB handled that. Well, I guess his phony war was enough to hurt him, we thought.

I could go on and on: things Obama has done for the US, the job market, the number of new companies up and running during his watch, the deficit being paid down by 4%, the DOW hitting a new high almost every day, GM saved, bin Laden gone, health care to help almost everyone in this country (IT IS THE LAW), lots of things, I have blogged about, some in the news (though not Fox), and almost all on the Internet. Those of you who read this and don’t know about them and care will look them up; the rest of you will refuse to believe it.

I wish I had five minutes to speak for Barack Obama. I would slash you with my words. I would call you the children that you are, I would point out your own transgressions, and I would definitely hit you up for racism. But I can’t do that. Here is the only problem, the way I see it. Barack Obama is entirely too nice in public. He has shown his anger more than once, but he just doesn’t say anything nasty to you. In words you might understand, the most right-winged of you, he reminds me of my fave NASCAR driver, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Dale is a good driver, but he is also a very nice and polite young man. He could win if he were willing to crash other cars, move them out of his way, as other drivers do. He is not aggressive enough on his playing field.

President Obama should take a lesson from that. Quit being so nice and polite on his playing field. Shove things through. Push the stubborn out of his way. Take advantage of his position to cram everything he can past the just-say-no thwarters. Use the power we the people gave him in such numbers, and give us what we want. I don’t care how mean he has to get to do it. Perhaps he could take this time that the scandal-mongers are using up front and out loud to get things done behind the scenes instead of having to try and defend himself against the lies. I will aid and abet him in any way possible.

I warn all you fault-finders and time wasters (38 times trying to vote out Obamacare). There are a lot of us out here, and we are ******* fed up with you. You WILL begin to feel our wrath – at the polls, in petitions, on the Internet, walking the streets. We outnumber you, and who knows, maybe we tolerant, peace-loving, nice folks will take my advice and start out-meaning you, turning your own words and deeds against you in a big way. Maybe some of the things you are crying for we will give you, only in a turnabout against you.

This blog is yours to share. Copy it to everyone you can think of. I will be sending it myself to news programs, to newspapers, to everyone I can think of. I know wordpress does send some of my blogs to other programs, like RSS and Netnews, and I want this one to reach everyone, especially those for whom it is intended. Send it over my name; leave yours off it. I’ll take full responsibility for what I have said, and I’ll stand over it the rest of my days.

You can reply here, on my Facebook page, anywhere you have a line to me. There is one caveat: I will save every post sent to me with a threat against me, or against the President, and I will see that these get to the proper authorities.

Carol Stepp
Austin, TX

Middle-Aged Angry White Men

You know, we live in a world of chaos, with people running around trying to frighten us out of our lives, and gun lovers wanting unrestricted use of all kinds of machines used specifically to kill people, and men and women beating on one another, and anger everywhere, as groups of people try to make everyone else to love the values they , want.

This causes a lot of turmoil in everyone’s life, and hatred stress and just plain old anger. And the angriest of all are the middle-aged white men.

There is a reason for this. For centuries, men have had the most power. In ancient times, women had equal power, in the home, in battle, in owning land. Then men in early Medieval times started putting women in lower classes, imprisoning them in the homes, taking care of the cooking, cleaning, and children. This lasted for many years. Even kings believed women chose the sex of their children, and famously beheaded or divorced women who did not give them sons. Racial problems did not seem to exist because there was not much traveling, and races seemed to congregate in their own places.

Then in the early 19th century things started to change. First came the United States of America. Owning slaves became a status symbol for the white man. Women were still chattels, as they had been for centuries. But midway though the century, people started questioning slavery. We had a Civil War (which is, of course, an oxymoron). Men went off to fight their glorious wars, and women learned how to run the farm, as well as the home. Many men did not come home, and women were forced to take charge. Black people got their freedom, but no one knew what to do with them once they were given their freedom. So not many of them prospered, unless they joined up with carpetbaggers, the white men who were out to make as much money as they could for themselves in the renewal of the laws of the land.

Late in the century, after women came into their own forcibly, they started clamouring for the vote. Not all women wanted the responsibility of voting – they wanted things to stay as they had been with men retaining all the responsibilities.

Negroes won the right to vote, and women won the right to vote, and men went off to their wars again. World Wars I and II, and once again women took over on the home front. After WW II, when the men started coming home again, black men who had fought in the war found they still had few rights for work and buying homes, and women were once again relegated to the kitchens and their children.

But this time women and black folks didn’t accept the return to the status. A president was killed, Vietnam got hot, and women refused to take a back seat any longer. The white men who were used to sitting in bars drinking their Schlitz, their Falstaff, their Lone Star, their Jax, suddenly discovered women were drinking beside them. Women were standing up against these men, refusing to be sexual slaves. More and more women joined the work force, and simply said they were no longer going to be relegated to being a man’s slave in a home, away from life. In the 60s, Negroes/blacks really came into their own as well. They knew that if they had to fight in that nasty Southwest Asian country, they had the rights to everything else that had been relegated to white men up until then.

They sat at lunch counters, they went into the same bars, shopped in the same stores, drank out of the same water fountains, went to the same schools. The country started filling up with Asians who began fleeing the warp-torn countries of the Asian front.

White men, mostly in the South by now, started fighting even harder to keep their superiority. They didn’t find so many bottle blondes in the bars plotting to find themselves husbands that they would have to swear to obey. Christian churches started trying to keep women as second-class citizens, and were determined to keep marriage and child-rearing as it had always been.

So the white men of those years have now grown up to be middle-aged, and are angry because they have lost their places as most powerful. As we have seen lately, the people who want their guns left alone are exactly these angry middle-aged white men. I suppose it really is true that most of these men see guns as an arm of their superior masculinity – perhaps they feel like their penises have shrunk, and the gun is an extension of that. Because they feel emasculated by women, and replaced by men of other colours. One cannot help but look at history and understand that this would come out of that. These white men probably do feel like they have to fight for their places, instead of accepting what has happened on the road to making the world a better place for everyone.

This is why I often say, the only way the world is going to change and everyone be able to happy with their roles in this new world is for my generation, and a large part of the generation after mine to die off. My granddaughters generation will be the first generation to have been born after all of the women’s and racial movements, and life as it should be will be more natural to them. If there remain white angry white men, white supremacists, and the like, it will be a small minority, mainly those boys who were raised by these middle-aged angry white men of today. And I think they will be much easier to teach that life is no longer as it was for white men through the ages. And they might actually find themselves in a better, kinder, more compassionate tolerant world.

I sure hope so, because if that doesn’t happen, I think a lot of folks are going to die in continuing needless wars, and perhaps even destroy their home world next time around.

Think about it.

Carol Stepp
Austin, TX

Les Miserables Movie from 1953

Well, tonight I was watching a series of movies in celebration of the actress Debra Paget, and one of them turned out to be a movie of Les Miserables from 1953, starring Michael Rennie as Jean Valjean and Debra Paget as Cosette. It was it in black and white, and not a musical. If I weren’t already aware of the music from the plays, and the newest movie, I would probably have liked it much better than I did. I’ll just say it was an excellent production for 1953, and
producers, who I don’t know who they are, did a pretty decent job with converting it from the book, considering the constraints movie makers were in way back in the day.

So, if you haven’t seen it, and care about just the story itself, catch it if you can, on TCM. There was a role of Fantine, and one of Marius, and Javert was in it as well. But it lost a lot for me because I love the music, and I like the actors, and there were no Thenardiers or Eponine or ABC students in it.

I am glad I’ve seen it, though it is not something I will seek out again.

Carol Stepp
Austin, TX

My Karma is Good

Last Wednesday I went to Best Buy looking for a computer.  I went in and told the folks there I had $300 to spend and that all I ever really use is the Internet.  For mail, banking, blogs, and my social life, Facebook.  One of the reps was about to take me to a computer to look at when another walked out with a box and said it was a computer that had been returned, but it had been checked and was up to factory specs, but since the seal had been broken, they could not sell it for regular price.  He said I could have it for $247+. 

My friend Joyce was with me, and I looked at the box and said “My God, Joyce, it’s a Dell”.  She looked at it and pointed out it also had Windows 8 on it. I said I would take it, and then I asked about virus protection.  I was told  that I could buy the $100 package which would give me virus protection and Geek Squad tech support for a year.  I had my debit card in my hand, and I said I couldn’t afford that – I had exactly $345 on it, and I would have to pay tax.  The rep said he would go talk to his manager, and when he came back he said his boss approved.

So I walked out of the Best Buy the owner of a Dell laptop with Windows 8. I picked it up on Thursday because they needed three hours to put the software on it for both packages, and Joyce had to go elsewhere. It worked beautifully in the store; when I got it home, after a couple of bobbles, I finally got it up and running (we have WiFi at the complex, so sometimes the signal flutters. Anyway, I am writing on it as I sit on my couch, and am very happy with it.

I tell you, between the free tooth extraction, and then this deal on the laptop, I have been very lucky.

I thanked the manager, and the agent, profusely, came home, did a like on Best Buy on FB, and then praised both Scott and Glenn in a message, along with the store they work in.

I guess having a sunny disposition, being old, and walking with the aid of a rollator (a rolling walker) cause some people to want to be nice to me.

Carol Stepp
Austin, TX

Kim Jun Un hates Austin, TX

We are having a bit of a laugh here in Austin over Kim Jong Un targeting Austin, TX. We cannot figure out why he has us as one of his chosen targets for rockets, along with Washington (state or DC?), Los Angeles, and Hawaii. There is lots of speculation.

He didn’t get to see his favourite band, the Dick Taters, at SXSW; he is jealous of Rick Perry’s hair; he doesn’t understand why folks don’t stand up when he walks into a room; he got mistaken for a bell hop at the W Suites and Hotel; he cannot get a girl to go with him to 6th street; he didn’t have cash at the Salt Lick Barbecue; he has mistaken it for Houston; they won’t let him wear his uniform to Barton Springs Pool; when he was trying to get a haircut at a high-end salon, they told him to get a hat; he got approached for money on the Drag (University of Texas). Lots of speculation like that.

Also, there is a big Samsung plant in Round Rock. Maybe he doesn’t like our pink granite capitol.

Our Police Chief Art Acevedo, when asked, said he wasn’t watching for any rockets headed our way.

Big laugh around here.

Carol Stepp
Austin, TX

Politics as usual

I have written little about politics these days, mostly because I have stayed away from them qutie a lot. I cannot help but keep up some with them simply because politics is part of my core being, and I cannot possibly ever leave them behind.

Watching Washington, and knowing that Barack Obama has to fight a Congress as against him as Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the last 30s-early 40s, has caused me to do a lot of reading lately about World War II, from the beginning when Hitler was an admired little Austrian to the events that led the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor, thus bringing America into the war, and Hitler’s bad decision to declare was against the US shortly thereafter, has caused me to see that the military question, the sequester question, the refusal of many of the politicians elected last year who refuse to get off their opinions that do not match the majority of the people they are supposed to be serving, and their tendency to keep saying “no” to the matters that are important – well, I think we are heading for another World War, perhaps within a year. I am booed by folks I chat with that a year is too short a time, although not one of them has disagreed that we will eventually end up in another world war.

Perhaps many of you/them see so many wars between separate nations, or internal strife in separate countries, or just simply don’t see a bigger picture. It is just that educating myself on the second world war causes me to see a great deal of similar movements among the nations. Last night I learned that there is a new book out titled Those Angry Days, just being released, by a writer named Lynn Olson, that is about the things happening in this country during those early days. It almost seems like Lynn has written a book I have been thinking about writing, but I have to read it first. I may have more comment about the Jewish question than she has.

I am just amazed that the world blew off what was happening to the Jews in Hitler’s Europe, and see what is occurring with Jewish leaders in this country today. Now I don’t know that another war will ever be fought over Jews, I doubt it, but I think Jewish leaders, who have never forgiven the part the world played in blowing off their problems (indeed, a lot of Jews blew it off as well, as they simply could, or would, not believe it could really happen to them), but perhaps Islamists will be the next victims. I think the war on women in this country may be conservatives trying to keep any other news that affects other peoples out of the news so we are not thinking about it.

So many silly things going on here to keep us immersed in our own problems, and not seeing what is really happening outside of our (the US) own interests. Not mine. I sit back and laugh at the three Republican Reps who suddenly see their own airfields, and their own military bases, and their own elderly/disabled/poor constituencies are being affected, and they are thinking their “yes” votes on the sequester were not good ones. I am also at present doing some computer politicking against Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn.

No doubt I will be getting more and more involved, and there will be blogs again, as we get closer to 2014. For the moment, I am trying to not get as involved as I was last year for Obama, but I don’t think this laying out is going to last very much longer. I just cannot keep my mouth shut for very long when I see things happening to the downtrodden – I have been an advocate for them for way too long to ignore what is going on for very long.

I do, though, see us going back to war. The wealthy want it (they get wealthier), the infrastructure will be worked on (must move those war machines quickly), the enemployed know they will get work because the war machine will require labour, and next time around, you can bet the USA will not be left out of the damage. The machines are worse, and will kill a whole lot more people, and perhaps if the US ever felt the destruction that happened to Japan and Europe and norther Africa and the South Pacifics countries, they will better care about what war really does to people and lands and cities. Sadly, I think it will take that to stop the war-mongers from calling for war, war, war. And I predict that if there is another world war, the countries who will come out on top will be China and Arab-speaking societies.

I’m 72 – if I’m lucky I will live a few more years, perhaps as many as 20 – and I will miss the slaughter. But I think I’m looking through rose-coloured glasses with that wish. I do think I will live to see destruction again, and it will be very, very soon – much sooner than most want to believe. Americans have a way of ignoring anything they don’t want to have to think about.

Wow, from an upper to a downer. I’m in fine form today.

Maybe I’ll have another blog in me tomorrow that will be a happier one.

Carol Stepp
Austin, TX

Les Miserables Tom Hooper Commentary

So last night, once again, I watched the DVD of Les Mis the Movie, but this time I watched it with Director Tom Hooper’s commentary. I wanted to know why he did some of the things he did with the music itself, and how he chose some of the scenes he chose.

First of all, he did the beginning with the convicts bringing in the badly-damaged war ship, as a sign that so much of the mistreatment of the people, both in jail and out, was because of the need for money for the military. Sound familiar? And throughout the movie, a lot of the dark scenes of the poor and starving were shown as being underneath ships. Interesting analogies. Where Fantine finally ended up, in the prostitution arena, was done under the bow of a damaged ship. And it represented the downtrodden as being in the darkness of hell, down as far as they could go. Yet each time a scene changed for the better for one was the picking up of them and carrying them up stairs to the light. This particularly showed with Valjean rising from the pits of the prison to the top of the mountains, and to the top of the town where the church was that taught Valjean of the lightness of a higher cause. When he tore up his parole papers, one shred was shown as floating upward to a opening in dark clouds to bright light.

The second time was when Valjean carried Fantine out of the pit to the hospital. This was representative of Valjean having each event carry him more and more from hate to redemption.

Tom Hooper referred to the book more than he did to the plays for a lot of the scenes and choices he made as director. I knew Hooper’s name, but did not know why I knew it. He was the director of The King’s Speech, for which he won best director a year or so ago, and eased the pain of not getting the director’s award for Les Mis.

The scene where Valjean has rescued Cosette from the Thenardiers, when Jackman sang the new song Suddenly, represented his discovery of love. So now Valjean with Cosette not only learns redemption, but now he is learning love. At a later point in the movie, Hooper quotes the book as that Valjean came to overlove Cosette (emotionally, not physically) by seeing her as “mother, wife, child”, so it was hard for him to let her go to another life. Thus he has a difficult time at the beginning after she and Marius meet letting her go to another man. That he does, and that he indeed works to bring their union about, speaks again as to how Valjean keeps growing.

So once he finds out about her love for Marius, he goes to the barricades where the students are determined to bring about revolution. This was an action he was trying to stay out of because he would return every nine years to running from Javert. Tom Hooper seemed to find it interesting that Victor Hugo spelled Valjean with “vj”, and Javert with “jv”. I don’t remember a comment about that in the book. Well, it has been about three years since I last read the book, and now I will be looking for Les Miserables to own it so I can read at least bits and parts now and again.

An explanation of Eponine’s different fate at the barricades comes from the book itself and Hooper decided to use it. The two plays tell us that Eponine was injured as she came to the barricade to find Marius. As we see in the movie, and is told in the book, Eponine has found a letter from Cosette to Marius to explain that her father was taking her away, and Eponine decided to not give it to Marius. When we see her at the barricade, where she has decided to take the letter to him after a while (after her song in the shows), she sees Marius in the line of fire of a soldier’s gun, and she throws herself in front of the gun to help Marius. That shows how very much she loves him and wants him to live. That makes the song much more poignant.

Hooper explains that when he first put the movie together, it was about four hours long. He had to cut a lot of music in order to get it down to a more workable 2-1/2 hours for the theatres. So we lost a few words of songs especially around the barricades particularly. He also moved a few songs, such as Fantine’s song, to different parts of the movie, thus we get Fantine’s song about betrayal and loss after she has had her first prostitutional encounter, which seemed to fit better than in the plays where it was right after she was fired from the factory.

Hooper also explained that some of the scenes involving Javert and Valjean were beefed up a little to show Javert’s slowing climbing toward the suicide which would eventually take him. His direction worked for me once I heard him explain why he made some of the choices he did. He did not at all explain why he chose to have Javert fall into the river instead of hanging himself in the sewers, except, his comments about the weirs in the river looked like and eye calling Javert in. I think that is interesting, and again, as I said in a earlier blog, I personally liked the suicide scene better because of it. Not that I will ever dislike Philip Quast’s rendition in the 10th anniversary musical. Quast was just so good, but Russell Crowe’s suicide was beautifully done, and very much a representation of his falling from the highest part to the lowest part. Incidentally, Hooper said Crowe did the dive himself, although they had a stuntman do the slipping into the river part.

It was an “aha” moment for me when I realized the ending, with all those people were on the barricade at the end singing “Tomorrow Comes”, and wondering why Cosette and Marius wasn’t in it, that those were all the dead people in heaven as Valjean enters, and Fantine returns. Just seeing the two plays I did, and not an actual play itself, did not give me that impression, even though Enjolras and Grantiere and all the students were in the finale in the two salutes (10th and 25th). Tom Hooper said originally a sign was put across the bottom of that photo saying that it represented the 1848 barricade where the people finally won their revolution, but he decided it was not appropriate and that it was better to just represent the people who were involved in this part of the revolution. I think his original thought was to show everyone as they would have looked in that future time, but that was not what the movie was about, and it was best just to salute those who were involved. I think I might not have liked that alternate ending, as this one satisfies me.

Now, about the elephant. At least one friend has asked me about it, and I had no answer for him. And I knew it was in the book, but I could not remember. Tom Hooper said it was a monument built by Napolean I as a memorial for one of Napolean’s battles. And that it had crumbled over the years between. The people in this story had fought off monarchs and at the time of this story, Napoleon III was on the throne. And the people did not want a king, and that is why they were fighting this second leg of the French Revolution which lasted over about 100 years. I’m not quite clear on the whole history – if anyone wants to know more, there are many good books about. I’m not sure I care about the whole thing as I am just caught by Les Miserables, this story, and the music itself with all the shows I’ve seen. The ideas of redemption, revolution and love appeal to my very romantic heart.

Well, this may be the last of my many blogs about Les Miserables, at least until I reread the book, or actually get to see the play in person. I believe Tom Hooper has made a movie that finalizes the reason I love the story, and I’m not sure I need to say anything else. If anyone has not read the book (it is very heavy reading) or has not seen the movie, I think you too will feel the way I do unless you are strictly interested in the history around the French Revolution itself.

I always find it a little odd seeing a movie, knowing it is never made in order of the show; he said the death scene with Cosette, Marius, and Valjean was the first shot he did with Amanda and Eddie and Hugh. And it did not take very many takes to get it. Movie-making has got to be a strange career, and yet when I was 17, I wanted to attend the Pasadena Playhouse of Performing Arts, but could not get the support of any of my parents, and girls just were not taught they could do things independently in those days. I have often wondered who I would be today had I had the chance to study acting and maybe been in the movies all those years ago.

Carol Stepp
Austin, TX