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Tuesday, October 10, 2017

A Little Closer to Hell...

You won't be seeing this guy on the Oscars Red Carpet anytime soon...
I'm watching another Hollywood career move to life support as Harvey Weinstein's atrocious behavior is coming to light with a never-ending barrage of A-listers leveling allegations of sexual harassment ever since The New York Times published their exposé.

I mean, when Oscar winners Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie start talking about you saying they are done keeping his secret now, because “women need to send a clear message that this is over” then rest assured, it's going to be over.

Yeah, this won't end well.

I have to say that I jumped on the anti-casting couch bandwagon over a year ago when I penned a column about "Casting Call, The Project," where real women read real casting notices. Maybe Weinstein should have read this...maybe he did and didn't care. Regardless, R.I.P. to Harvey Weinstein as a Hollywood mogul.

Speaking of dying careers, I hope Donna Karan is ready to see a dip in sales because her troublesome and downright idiotic opinions about the alleged serial sexual predator Harvey, you can expect women to stop buying DKNY fashions for the foreseeable future. The Daily Mail interviewed Karan on the CinéFashion Film Awards red carpet and said this:
"I think we have to look at ourselves. Obviously, the treatment of women all over the world is something that has always had to be identified. Certainly in the country of Haiti where I work, in Africa, in the developing world, it’s been a hard time for women.
"To see it here in our own country is very difficult, but I also think how do we display ourselves? How do we present ourselves as women? What are we asking? Are we asking for it by presenting all the sensuality and all the sexuality?"
Did she really just suggest they were asking for it? But did she stop there? Not even close! I can only imagine the reporter’s concealed delight knowing that this interview had more crackpot gold in those mountains as Karan finished her red carpet tour de force with this nugget of wisdom:
"You look at everything all over the world today and how women are dressing and what they are asking by just presenting themselves the way they do. What are they asking for? Trouble."
Yeah, this won't end well either. So, not to be flip, but speaking of death...

...Okay, so where am I?

Seems I have spent a lot of my trips recently near or in cemeteries. On this trip to Poland, I have visited the death camps in Auschwitz and Majdanek and felt the immense pain of death of the people
The final feet of railroad that leads into Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
interned there. Going to Majdanek was a day of remembrance to those we, as a people, let perish through racism, ignorance, and indifference. Majdanek was a concentration and forced labor camp that evolved into a death camp. It opened in September 1941, initially for Soviet prisoners of war, and was liberated by the Soviet Army in July 1944. During this time approximately 360,000 victims died or were murdered, 120,000 of them Jews.

The inmates of comprised people of 54 nationalities from 28 different countries. They included Soviet prisoners of war and Jews from Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, France, Hungary, Belgium and Greece. In addition, many non-Jews from Belorussia, the Ukraine and across Poland were taken to the camp as political prisoners or slave laborers.

I see these atrocities up close and wonder how there can ever be resistance to giving support in any form to stop the genocides that are still occurring in our world. No amount of photos or thoughtful words can capture what I saw. Truly heartbroken.

The only thing that got me through this agony of all of this was the lunch I had a couple of months ago to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery to see where Johnny Ramone is buried and saw the most bizarre thing: a cemetery jogger.

Running a few steps closer to hell...
One upon a time we respected the dead and didn't need a life manual to tell us to either. It just came naturally. Dying is the only thing we spend our lives preparing to do, so at least give credit to the time and effort dedicated to do it. Instead what you see at cemeteries now is pretty unsettling. If you believe in the concept of people spinning in their graves, one can only image the anger, commotion, and outrage going on six feet under.

I was paying my respects to Rudolph Valentino, the actor who played Larry Tate on Bewitched, and Peter Lorre when I was stunned to see a twentysomething year-old huffing and puffing down the cracked cement path that separates the grave sites. She passed me and then two other women in short-shorts who were power walking almost slamming to a man walking his three dogs.

Seriously? It's a cemetery for goodness sakes!

Also seen at the cemetery...ugh!
There's headstones and monuments and ghosts trying in earnest to rest in peace! This is hallowed ground and not your playground. Whenever I see a jogger sprinting through a cemetery, I secretly wish he was screaming as a dozen ghouls and zombies chase him down with a book of etiquette. I mean, how tone deaf can you be to think that your pursuit of fitness extends to desecrating sacred resting places with your exercise? I mean just because it's quiet and green, does it give you a pass to take over? What don't you lay out a picnic blanket over that fresh mound of dirt, set up a barbecue and cook a filet? Better yet, lay out your yoga mat and find your zen spot.

C'mon people, a little respect please...leave those souls in the ground some dignity and solitude. This isn't parking on Hollywood Boulevard. We don't need no jogging signs to point this out, do we? I mean there aren't signs in church that say no iPods in the sanctuary, but you know not to bring those things there.

Leave the dead their peace.

Stop vandalizing grave sites with your running shoe footprints which bring you a little closer to hell with each step.

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Harvey Weinstein was personally thanked or praised by name in at least 34 Oscar speeches from 1993 through 2016...ugh!: