Reflections From a Murky Pond

Due to the sad state of the world today just about every person in the Civilized World knows that sex can be quite dangerous. So can many of the concomitant activities that accompany or even replace sex in many instances.

Of course safe sex – more accurately described as “safer” sex” – both doesn’t address all of the risks associated with sex and presents a few unusual risks of its own. 😛

Her Eyes Were Bigger Than Her Mouth 😉

And, as you can see here, there are certain potentially hazardous consequences for women, and not just the ones that come easily to mind.

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Of course it’s not just the women who are in danger. Sex, in all it’s forms and alternatives, can be dangerous for men as well.

QUESTION: What’s the greatest danger for a guy in having sex with a virgin?

ANSWER: They might be so tight that he develops a sub-Durex haematoma.

So have fun with it, but think for about what you’re about to get into – or get into you. 😆

American Dumpling is an independently produced feature length (81 minute run time) documentary written, directed and narrated by Eileen Nelson.  It is not a documentary about food per se, nor does American Dumpling contain much in the way of useful cooking tips and/or techniques. It is, in fact, a series of informal dialogues with several American families from a variety of immigrant cultures that uses the commonality of the dumpling as comfort food as a starting point for conversation.

American Dumpling
A Simple Story of Flour, Water, and Salt

American Dumpling is a film about families more than food – but food and family go together, else why would all cultures that I know of believe that the hearth is the center of the home?

Before I go further, let me be clear on one thing – It is unusual to the point of uniqueness for me to review or critique films of any sort, much less independent documentaries. Bear with me.

In point of fact, I actively avoid reviewing media offerings, and if the film’s Score Co-Producer, Kelly Mahan Jaramillo, wasn’t one of the few liberal types that I respect in the blogsphere, I wouldn’t have even seen the film much less reviewed it here.

American Dumpling – Review / Critique

Synopsis

In a nutshell the film is a montage of anecdotes from a small number of families and individuals who either are immigrants or are still actively maintaining at least some of the cultures of the peoples they descended from.

The melting pot of America is the melting pot of the dumpling, and although each cook has their own unique little spin they put in the recipe, it still boils down to three ingredients that are absolutely necessary – flour, water, and salt.

In walking out of this film, you get the feeling that you have known all of the characters for years.

— American Dumpling

The dumpling – flour, water, and salt – may be the glue that binds the narratives together, but the anecdotes are wide ranging and speak more of people and history than they do of ingredients.

Because people let their guard down when they’re in the kitchen – after all only friends and family are allowed near the hearth – American Dumpling provides a rare sort of glimpse into the lives, families, and histories of the people in the movie.

Review / Critique

Let me start with saying that I greatly enjoyed American Dumpling and found the film, not just enjoyable overall, but also quite engrossing. The glimpses the film gives into the lives of the people and families in it is a rare gift, and the glimpses of America’s and world’s history – including parts of it that are rarely spoken of – is even more so.

It is, however, not a polished production being filmed with a single camera / single microphone technique and being quite free-form in nature. While I liked the immediacy and intimacy this technique created, others might find less pleasing. This is not to say that the film is reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project, just that it is less polished and less cinematic than some documentaries have been.

The Good – Or, At Least, What I Especially Liked

• The intimacy the film had with both the people in it and with its creator & narrator, Eileen Nelson. American Dumpling, especially Eileen’s narrative interjections, is rather “flow of consciousness” in style, but that lets the viewer get a good sense of the people and the filmmaker.
• The audio track and the scoring worked surprisingly well. This is especially rare in documentaries that take place in noise-filled environment and that were filmed using a single microphone. It was a definite concern of of the Kelly Mahan Jaramillo and the other audio folks in the crew.

The Bad – Or, At Least, What I’d Rework

• While I liked Eileen’s narration of the film and the sense of herself she brought to it, she is at times a bit disjointed and wanders off-topic a bit. That can be a bit distracting and slightly jarring.
• American Dumpling was admittedly and obviously meant to be a different and shorter work and some of the editing didn’t take the best advantage of the final longer cut. Some of the cutaways and jumps between people in the film seem to cutoff the speakers and are a bit frustrating.

All in all though, it’s an engrossing and impressive film, especially one by an independent production group operating on a tiny budget. I think it could benefit from some rework and editing, but it is more than worth going to see if it makes it to a film festival near you, and well worth buying on DVD or Direct Download if it becomes available via those formats.

American Dumpling – Credits & Specs

PRODUCER: Eileen Nelson
CO-PRODUCER: Darrell Hanzalik
COMPOSER: Tomás Hradcky
SCORE CO-PRODUCER: Kelly Mahan Jaramillo
EDITING: Eileen Nelson
SOUND SUPERVISOR: Darrell Hanzalik
SOUND MIXER: Dave West

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LENGTH / RUN-TIME: 81 Minutes
FORMAT: DVD Video NTSC
AVAILABILITY: To Be Determined

One thing that American Dumpling really shows is that, to a large extent, people are people. The good, the bad, the ugly, the noble, and the base – people project these things onto different and wildly disparate targets but, underneath it all, it’s the same sentiments.

Truth in Media, or at least classic television? Quite possibly. American television was a lot different in the mid-1960s when ABC created and aired The Addams Family.

Solid Marriage – Sad When The Freaks Can Do It And You Can’t

I ask all those who are against gay marriage because “it will weaken the family” or “destroy traditional marriage” is this what you’re really afraid of? Are you actually just terrified that the queers will manage to do better than our – straights, that is – 50% success rate at having solid marriages – or at least ones that don’t end in divorce?

Come on. There are plenty of valid reasons to fight against the gay marriage laws that they have passed and continue to try to pass in various states. Most were either designed to infringe upon the religious freedoms and freedom of association of various Christian groups or were twisted by queers and the Liberals into doing so. But…it’ll destroy traditional marriage and the sanctity thereof? Please!

 
The racist hate group, the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) leader, “Minister” Louis Farrakhan jabbered at an audience in Memphis, TN,  telling them that he believes the H1N1 flu vaccine was developed by Whites to kill millions of people throughout the world – but particularly Blacks in America’s inner cities.

It was a recurring theme in his over-an-hour-long jabbering and hollering screed against America, Whites, and especially Jews.

From the Memphis Daily News:

The H1N1 vaccines – they’re telling you there’s a pandemic but they don’t have enough to get an influenza vaccination and many wise people won’t take it,” he said. “You see, years ago (former Secretary of State) Henry Kissinger talked about the work of the new century was culling billions of people from our planet. In the Talmud, the people are called goyem who are useless eaters. They eat but they are useless. … Culling is another word for getting rid of billions of people because they say things are shrinking in terms of what people need, there are too many people for too few resources.

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We have to develop a science that kills them and make it look as though they died in a pestilence or they died from some disease

Normally this sort of repetitive, drooling mouthings spewing from the maw of a subhuman vermin like Farrakhan wouldn’t be worth mentioning. This time, however, it sparked my interest in an odd way and hence, this post was created.

What if society operates in a fashion similar in some manners to an organism? If so, Farrakhan could unknowingly be functioning as one of American society’s antibodies and helping our nation kill off disease within “the body” of our nation.

If the cultists – all avowed enemies of human society – who follow Farrakhan and believe what he spews up choose not to get vaccinated against various diseases such as the H1N1 influenza virus, then it’s possible that they will sicken and die off, freeing America from their cancerous growth.

H1N1 is actually a weak strain of influenza and far less lethal than many of the other strains circulating through the world, so we will sadly reap little or no immediate benefit from Farrakhan rants.

So perhaps Farrakhan does serve a useful purpose after all – as a societal antibody that helps kill off one of the “diseases” plaguing our land. Even if the current strain of H1N1 doesn’t live up to the hype surrounding it, something will come along that will and Farrakhan’s cultists may well die from it and thereby purge America of their sickness.

I don’t think Farrakhan would appreciate the comparison to a White blood cell at all though. 😉

One has to hand it to German – and Austrian – agriculture. The farmers there are certainly some of the finest in all of Europe.

Girls of Germany and Austria  –  Jungbauernkalender 2010

Yes; these lovely girls are actually farmers in Germany and Austria, not models hired out of the cities for the calendar. What truly amazes me that few tourists ever seem to rave about the German countryside.

Ich konnte lernen Deutsches Bauer-Kochen lieben! 😛