Little House Field Day

An old lion of a logger (Forrest Tucker) is still strong as an ox but losing his stuff, so he plays cock with Charles when they both take the crosscut saw to the North Woods' Finest Oak to fill an order for Hansen's Mill. Both men taunt the other and decide to settle who the better woodchop is during Founder's Day; A celebration of the town's birth wherein many athletic contests/entertainments occur. The Parents Ingalls are harsh with the littluns about wanting to Win more than just Compete. But Charles and Carolyn are both hungry for victory; Charles in the log split v. Forrest Tucker and Carolyn v. Mrs. Olesen in the Pie-Off. Reverand Alden judges the pies and blue-ribbons some woman in her eighties (me suspects the fix is in though to the credit of the show you dont know if she won on merit or if Alden was grandmothering her in <-or maybe im ageist?). Wife of Forrest Tucker pleads with Charles to throw the axe-off but for the wrong reasons. ie: let him have his moment in the sun, he's old and getting tired, let him have one last celebration of his potence. It should have been dude has given a lot to the community and the win would be a sort of honorary award. Either way Charles is The Biggest Man of Us All by freeing himself of desire. Contrastingly: You are supposed to picture willie and nellie olesen crowing over their blue ribbons and then demanding candy recompense from Queen Capital: Harriet Olesen.
Everyone's a winner except those without virtue.
sidestories: Nels gets emasculated in the tug of war
Olesen children sweep the hoop roll and rope-skip
Carolyn helps Laura and the Ingalls' bring home 1 ribbon in the 3-legged race
Mrs. Olesen is humiliated in same race

Things Ive Learned Home Sick

1) when talking toast, tahini is not only an adequate substitute for peanut butter, it might be better than peanut butter
2) using both yogurt AND milk in a smoothie isn't like mixing matter with antimatter (this is along the lines of another recently exploded self-made myth-> hot coffee and a sandwich go really well together)
3) women's nipples grow just as exponentially as the rest of their body when they are pregnant
4) moolahcat's whiskers are awesomely gigantic
5) in a bag of chocolate covered pretzels the crumbs are chocolate

Little House: The Olsens in Love and War

Harriet Olsen lowballs Carolyn Ingalls on egg prices. Nels Olsen intercedes. Eggs wind up on Nels' head. A final straw. Nels moves into the hotel rooms upstairs with his hound-dog. Caroline and Charles Ingalls make inroads and chip away to bring them together. When these long-standing caricatures of nagger and in-effectual naggee look right at each other and tell each other they still love each other, maybe even more than ever, a curtain is lifted on the everyday caricatures of ourselves that we all reflexively, unwittingly fall into the rut of - Cores laid bare. Skip the BS and get down to essentials.

"Barry Lyndon"-Kubrick - Something Against Entertainments

Class-and-Cash Anxious Irish Lad Adventures, Gambles, and ad-libs around warring europe, finds a rich wife and becomes a miserable human being who loses it all and a limb to boot. Without any discernible ethos save getting stuff and allowing for fortune and fate to present options (Options are as Gold) we are left with a centerless, wayward douchebag cavorting in beautifully shot vistas, smoky galleries, and still museum-piece sitting rooms.
That's the sum of this sprawler.
Do what you can in your time period to get what you can out of it.
Man adjusting to, manipulating, and at the whim of The Fates.
Big deal.
Why bother? Nothing against Entertainments. Well, actually, yeah, Something Against Entertainments. The ones that Advertise Findable Meaning and Usefulness via Meaningful Slownesses and Ponderances (The Kubrick Meditative Slowness - Big Scale Shot and Not Much Occurring). Working to find meaning is good and fine but when it is (maybe? if we give Kubrick credit that maybe he doesnt deserve here) so deeply embedded (or im too dumb to see it) what is the point? I mean bring the abstraction, make me work, that's fine. But if you're in the middle ground work a bit harder to give people a clue. If this was a cautionary tale I'm only cautioned to be nicer to my stepson and maybe have a bit more perspective.
Or maybe this was just an Entertainment with a Sensibility. It's kinda like maybe Kubrick was a greater craftsman than a man of ideas.

Capsule Review: "The Conformist" - Fascism Never Looked So Cool -

"The Conformist" (Bertolucci): Traumatized by childhood incident man strives to be 'normal' by rising through Fascist (-Italy) ranks, taking a wife who is "good for the bed and kitchen," and pledging to kill off his former-professor, now an anti-fascist in exile in France.

Deco Styles, Fascist-Cool Architecture (spare, spacious, white, severe), hotties in perfect dresses, sharp-as-hell suits, sweet rides, Gorgeous Rome and Paris, pocketed guns, and train and car rides through scenery. It's an eyeful. Intense in spots. Not real damning or inquisitive about Fascism's allures. More about replacing damage with answers. He could just as well have become a Jehovah's witness.
Quality escapism.