Google It?

Google It?

Written by Author Roy Murry



I’ll preface this with the fact that I’m 66 years old.

We come to the 21^st Century. I remember when we decided an argument like – who kick the 1955 field goal to win X American Football game? - By asking someone in the know. If that person wasn’t available, we’d find a World Almanac. My last one purchased is the 2010.

In the local pub, club, living room with friends or any place people meet, discussions can get heated over a question like – who won the MVP in any sport in X year.  One person would say one name and another would disagree.

Who has the right answer? And we would ask another person or if it was available, consult The World Almanac.

Yesterday, I was in a bar and the question arose – who portrayed the brother of Maureen O’Hara in the movie The Quiet Man, an Irish tale of love and a family dispute over a dowry. One said Ward Bond and another person said Victor McLaglen.

Words were had. An argument pursed and bets were made.

“Google It!” was the cry. And the answer was googled…   

Review of The Sound and The Fury

Faulkner’s The Sound and Th Fury

 Reviewed by Author Roy Murry

In William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and The Fury, he uses a new way of understanding of what is happening at a given point of time. It was called ‘Stream of consciousness.’ I learnt the method and applied it to my main character in my novel The Audubon Caper.

Faulkner’s style was so prolific that he won two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction – A Fable and The Rivers. He was relatively unknown until receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. It was his The Sound and The Fury I read for my American Literature college course.

This story of a declining Southern aristocrat family is broken down into four distinct sections of time. Each time period has a narrator who dabbles into the history of the family and its black servants. The narrators sometime rabble on, but their rabbling have a point – they are losing power over their society.

From a historical point of view, I found the background information as good as any historical novel I have read. And, I have read many.

I enjoyed the way Faulkner’s writing brought out the sorrow that happened in the South after the loss of the Civil War. It was a decline of an era where land owners ruled over the populous and the slaves made them money from the brutal work they did.

Southerners of America had to change their ways. This is what Faulkner told best in the narrators. They needed to change their ways or lose their aristocratic position.    

The Sound and The Fury: http://amzn.to/1CitVpb

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Novelist

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Novelist

Written by Author Roy Murry

I was going to write an article about Fitzgerald and his novel The Great Gatsby, but decided to write two separate articles. This is about the man.

Fitzgerald lived what he wrote. He coined the words, “The Jazz Age” in the Great Gatsby and used the term he lived in some of his other novels: Lost Generation, and The Love of the Last Tycoon.

Many of his writings became movies and are part of his legacy. To name a few, they are Gatsby, of course, Tender is the Night, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

He married Zelda Sayer after a long courtship because of Fitzgerald’s lack of funds. They eventually married and became infamous figures of the Jazz Age Society. Zelda’s emotional instability and Fitzgerald’s alcoholism almost destroyed the marriage. They had one child Frances Scott “Scotty” Fitzgerald.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prose prompt one critic to note about Gatsby, “There is no such thing…as a flawless novel. But if there is, this is it." For me it, this was the most enjoyable 187 pages I read in college.

His page on amazon: http://amzn.to/Y4l4bs

Review of The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street

Movie Review by Author Roy Murry

Firstly, I feel the movie was too long to get the point across – Greed still exists in the sale of anything albeit in the Stock Market on Wall Street or the TV sales on Info Commercials. I once went that route and was a Commodity Broker, but dropped out for not feeling comfortable in that environment.

The same sales pitches were made in this movie as I had as a broker. Greed was the motivator. Put a picture of the Porsche you want up on your wall and that is your goal. Fuck the guy you’re selling to whether the product is good or not, as long as we make a profit.

Scorsese’s character WOLF of Wall Street, Leonardo DiCaprio takes this theme and magnifies it to the 10^th degree. WOLF uses drugs and sex to motivate all the brokers so they will full fill their dreams. It’s all around them in living color and explicit in this movie – buyer beware.

The ending is appropriate, but it comes at 2 hours and 40 minutes into the movie. We get the point – Honesty is the best policy. Greed always loses in the end - fair interpretation

It was fair to good acting by DiCaprio and his supporting cast. It is not one of his best performances.

If you care to purchase: http://amzn.to/1rn3yLn

Garrison Keillor and the Radio

Garrison Keillor and the Radio

Before the television was in every American home, before we had I-phones, laptops with Netflix, of watched a movie on our I-pads, we had what is called Live Radio Performances. Garrison Keillor’s Live Saturday night program was based on those performances that people sat around a large tubed object called THE RADIO.

To name a few of the 50s popular shows: Green Hornet (Thriller), Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (Song and Comedy), The Adventures of Superman (Crime drama), and Strike It Rich (Game Show). There were many other popular – link below.

Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion and All Things Considered were presented in 1970s. His programs incorporated live variety show with comedy and music for the radio audience of St. Paul Minnesota.

His shows ultimately reached millions in the mid-west of the USA. The show traveled and was tailored performed across America from New York City’s The Town Hall to Los Angeles’ the Greek Theater.

I got to know about him from Public Television where these performances amazed me. I was like watching the radio of the fifties.

What are you watching today?

Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrison_Keillor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1950s_American_radio_programs

Ellie Woods

Ellie Woods

Reese Witherspoon’s break through movie was Legally Blond where she plays Ellie Woods, a movie I have watched a number of times. Another of my favorites is the movie Sweet Home Alabama made in 2002.

I did not much care for Legally Blonde 2. There are just some movies that you should not make into a sequel and Legally Blonde was one.

Legally Blonde is about a young woman coming of age in college. Her boyfriend, who is going off to Law School says he needs a Jackie Kennedy not a Marilyn Monroe to get ahead in life and he breaks up with Ellie.

To get her love of her life back, she enrolls in the same Law School to his and everyone’s surprise. She is a logically smart woman with a mission. She reaches a goal of notoriety she or anyone would expect and finds a new love – the law.

I found this romantic comedy funny and well put together. For a fun Saturday afternoon or anytime movie check this out http://amzn.to/ZGXLWB

El Yunque

El Yunque, Puerto Rico

Travel by Author Roy Murry

They say the rain lies mainly on the plain in Spain, but others say that if you want to see beauty and see what much rain produces, go to El Yunque, the rain forest, in the middle of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It’s a shorter trip, you don’t need a passport, and most our Puerto Rican friends speak English.

If you go to this lovely island and stay on the beaches, you will have missed one of the many gorgeous vistas that nature has provided for us to enjoy. It’s a day trip if you are staying in a San Juan hotel. However, it’s better to stay at a close by hotel and stay for two days or more of your trip at one of these establishments: http://bit.ly/Zc8t7m

Then take your day trip to the old city of San Juan and have lunch at the famous restaurant Siglo XX http://sigloxxpr.com/ and have Seafood Paella that will tell your friends what the missed. Walk off that meal whether breakfast or lunch by seeing the sights which includes Castillo de San Cristobal built in 1783.