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"If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of
opposition to overwhelm you."
-Frank Herbert

Saw Gosford Park today. I'm a sucker for the Brits, love mysteries, but never watch those A&E dramas. No idea why. But Helen Mirren rocks -- her Prime Suspect series really was as good as everyone said, but I took a long time to come around to them. In Gosford Park she (and nearly every other British actor worth knowing) are damn fine. The movie was everything I'd been expecting and even a bit more. What else can you ask for for $10? Oh, wait, it was $10 plus $8-plus, because I let myself get roped into buying food. Small popcorn, small soda, one cookie. Eight bucks.

So that's good cinema. Now, for some bad.

I haven't seen 40 Days And 40 Nights, and never plan to, but the advertisements alone are irritating on so many levels, it really shouldn't be missed. Here's the plot description courtesy of the Internet Movie Database:

"A young man breaks up with his girlfriend and then tests himself by swearing off physical contact with girls for the 40 days of Lent, while his ex schemes to seduce him back into her life, breaking his vow."

Next, let's have a little reality check. I understand that there are some boys out there in la-la land who might resemble Josh Hartnett (ye slut of ye film) who might get it every 40 days, but unless you're in some kind of regular relationship or are a serial dater, I would profess that most young men go a lot longer than 40 days between getting laid. Wasn't that the whole point of films like Porky's? We're supposed to believe this is some kind of major hardship? (Or, pun intended, lack of hardship?)

Finally, here's the religious issue (and I'm not even Catholic). You have a boy who, being nice and Catholic, still follows Lent. He gives up something for it. How nice. But what is he giving up? Premarital sex. Does no one other than me see the idiocy behind that as a concept? Here's some other potential films, along that same line:

• 40 Oys And 40 Nights: A Jewish man is forced to give up bacon for a month.
• 40 Salaams And 40 Nights: A Muslim is forced to fast during the daylight hours for 40 days ... during Ramadan.
• 40 Reformations And 40 Nights: A Protestant must ... ahh, ya stumped me there. Can't WASPs do anything, pretty much?

Next, I got a little bug in my bonnet (no, not a remaining cluster fly) over peoples' lack of knee-jerk ethics. Now, I'm not exactly Miss Mary Sunshine when it comes to ethics; like all of us, I equivocate to some degree. But in addition to being a big believer in karma coming back on you, I also like being able to feel good about myself, and if I do something which benefits me in the short run but which hurts someone else (even if they don't know I'm responsible), I don't feel very good about myself. In the long run, feeling good about yourself inside, having that clean, clear conscience, I feel is more important than the short-term gains you may have.

And, for those who still don't get it, sometimes you end up getting more on the back end than you might ever have on the front end -- in sheer materialistic terms. To wit: When I moved to NYC, I had a small problem -- I was still getting free CDs in the mail, there was no way I could keep them all, and besides, I needed the extra cash just as I had in Boston. So I needed to find a place, as I had in Boston, which would buy my CDs. (Okay, so that's my equivocation -- technically, the CDs are on "loan," but the fact is the CD companies do not ask for them back, and I could not have enough space in any domicile I've ever lived in to take up all the space if I didn't sell them. So, there you go.) Anyway, I took them down to St. Mark's Place and picked out one decent-looking spot. Went back a few times. Then I was with my friend Valerie one night (we were going to dinner at nearby Dojo's -- best tahini dressing in the world) and I sold some CDs to have some walking around/dinner-paying money. They should have given me $25; they gave me $75. I knew when I walked out of the store they'd given me way too much, and had to think about it. We went and had dinner, and all through it, I had to fight with whether to keep the money or not. I think I always wanted to return it, but what finally pushed me over the edge was thinking that some yutz could get fired at the end of the night because he screwed up, and that wasn't fair. At least, I wasn't going to be what got him fired. So after dinner, I took the money back. (My ethics/moral sense sometimes takes time to get revved up.) Turns out the manager for that night was behind the counter when I returned it -- "I think you gave me more than you were supposed to" -- and naturally, they took it back. But she was pretty impressed, I think, and since then, whenever I go in to sell CDs, she always buys all of mine and gives me good money for them. (I've experimented with other buyers, and they're not nearly as generous or as completist, and after you've schlepped 40 CDs downtown, you do not want to take them back if they're rejected.) So although I don't know if she does it on purpose or not, I managed to get something on the back end from being honest -- in addition to feeling pretty smooth about myself. More recently, on the trip to Utica, I got some pretzels, but the cafe counter lady didn't have change for a $10, so she told me to come back later. I did, after Albany, but she had left and a new guy was there. I told him the situation, he told me to forget it. Free pretzels! Clean conscience!

So, sometimes, it's not just intangible results.

But tonight on 60 Minutes (I'm addicted, I gotta see that show), they had this guy Welch, who was responsible for bringing the Olympics to Salt Lake City, and who is utterly unrepentant about his methods (which basically involved giving the International Olympic Committee members/grubbers whatever they asked for, including college scholarships for their kids and free plane tickets from Africa to Toronto for weddings. His entire argument boiled down to: "Well, everybody else was doing it." What did mom always say? "If everybody jumped off that bridge, would you do it, too?" Welch would, apparently, and feel vindicated for doing so if it got the Olympics to Salt Lake. What kills me is the guy's absolute lack of a moral compass. His always points north: If it gets him what he wants or needs or was hired to do, he's dandy with that. I kept waiting for Mike Wallace to ask some of the real crucial questions -- he poked around by calling it what the U.S. Government is calling it, "bribery," which caused Welch to bristle -- but he never followed up. Welch insisted it wasn't quid pro quo -- I give you the scholarship, you give me a vote at the IOC -- so it wasn't bribery. Hell, if it walks like a duck, Welch, it is a duck. I hoped Wallace would follow up with, "Well, then, would you have given these people these things if they weren't on the IOC's voting committee?" To which Welch would have had to answer "No," to which Wallace could have said, "Then what did you give it to them for?" I mean, come on. The amount of denial stunk up my room. Then the Governor of Utah (er, I think that was who it was, yeah, it was) who hired Welch in the first place made it seem as though it was really the Justice Department's fault "for making this a criminal case." He said that all of this would have faded away by now if they hadn't tried to prosecute Welch, and intimated that we all would have been better off. Oh, really? When I first heard Salt Lake had bribed its way to getting the Olympics, I figured they'd be disqualified. It amazed me that all of this scandal wasn't re-visited over the last two weeks of self-congratulatory/advertiser-feeding/good-ole-boy patriotism we all had shoved down our throats. Having the Atlanta mayor on to indicate that this is just how it's been done for years, and Welch shouldn't be singled out was even more illuminating -- but again, no Wallace follow up: "Did you or anyone you hired solicit bribes to bring the Olympics to Atlanta?"

The Olympics stink. Maybe at one point, when professional athletes and professional advertisers hadn't gotten their paws into the whole thing, when the idea of sport for sports sake, and being the best because you are the best hadn't been so soiled by the shit of the money-grubbers, maybe that was something to see. But what it is today is just embarrassing. NBC crowed every day how it was so lovely to see pure competition, for the sake of unity and blah blah. Then they'd turn around and say  how important it was for the U.S. to come away with the most medals of every country. Truth is, the real gold medals should go to the liars and the cheaters and the con men who brought you two weeks of Sport (TM) and Competition (Registered Trademark) while selling you products you don't need, which will break soon after you get them, and which are made in exploitative conditions by underpaid workers and all of which is underscored by the disastrous NAFTA agreement. (Oh, man, don't get me started: Bill Moyers had my stomach roiling, since it now appears that if a chemical in California is determined to be poisoning the water and California's legislature tries to ban it -- if that chemical is partly made in Canada, the corporation can sue California under Chapter 11 provisions for causing a loss to their profits. Great. Foreign nations can now dicatate American public policy.)

I'm gonna be sick.

Meanwhile, poor Daniel Pearl. That's a shitty way to go. (A preview of Harrison's Flowers just before Gosford Park made me somewhat queasy, in light of this development. They really ought to pull that picture.) Rest in peace.