Our weekly gathering, the fixed point now in my Monday nights, just finished and again i think how much i enjoy these new characters who've entered the tableau of my life: you of the Chan Family. How i hope i don't "talk" too much and may i give perhaps encouragement to any who feel i do, by offering the image of a puppy (who should not be fed chocolate). I'm still a little frisky, and time will settle me down. I do indeed heed the remarks of all the chatroommates, and i learn from each of you. Not just about Charlie, by the way, and not only about movies even. From the fray, i've jotted notes of must-follow-ups about history and pop culture, and yet more than that. What treasures each of the Chan Clan members are. In a world that not only looks to social networks for its information but finds its high-water marks there, i know you each have what are at least comparatively more substance and solidity than any of what or who i encounter in the ordinary life of today. Your light remarks about what were in their time light works of the narrative art emphasize the true poverty of those arts today; also that there sure was something different about the world in which the classic films were made: even the most humble had their integrity. The wealth of special effects and regularly occurring apocalypses in the media of today only show that they are empty in every regard, and that so are their creators and actors and also their viewers.
Some friends of mine in their 20s and 30s have criticized the works which comprise our Canon when they've found them on the screens in my home. They say "you have to think" to watch these movies. May i rapidly say i don't have from them (& i don't think they could give me) a description, example, or categorization of any sort to clarify "these movies". Provoking their (good-natured) remarks have been the films we revere, the "B" and "A" features of the unpretentious sort from, say, the mid-1930s through the '50s, particularly the delicious crime stuff and especially Charlie and his cohort. So i'd say that's what they mean, or close enough. And we all know and are sad to know that "you have to think" is from this cohort a criticism. A grave criticism, one that once affixed seals not only a work & not just a genre but a whole art from so much as a revisitation. Meantime with these criticisms uttered and the implication that in whatever is "not" the "condemned" style there is merit---my young friends stand in embrace of whatever it is they say beats all. They don't know and may well never know what makes for storytelling or even a story, because their minds are so closed. That somebody closed them for them is beside the point. They venerate apocalypses and effects, and their literature (need i mention that not a one has ever read a book nor will they) is movies whose titles end with numbers ("Agent Disaster Demon 16"). A waste is a terrible thing to mine, and they flee the notion that "you have to think". I did not mention that my young friends fault these films for a variety of violations of the present day's political correctness. Needless to say i've never engaged them on any of this and for a variety of reasons. But if i could get them to think to explain how they know the entire world of another era to be indictable and regard its contemplation to be a crime (and support folks who would make its contemplation a crime), they wouldn't think of me as a friend. I'd be asking them to think, which their heroes do not---while telling them what to.
Every Monday night i get to visit with genial intellects contemplating works of an era said by genuine intellectual phonies to have been simple, and yet its contemplation to be difficult. How i appreciate the sage insights of the Chan Family every Monday, each and every one!

Mr. Angel. Unfortunately, youth is hard-headed--I know I sure was back in the day! I don't know if you've ever read one of the 6 Charlie Chan novels? However, they are more on par to what his counterpart (as I call him) Sherlock Holmes has become in the public eye: That being respected. Charlie Chan, would undoubtedly have remained as infamous as Holmes, had Hollywood and world situations (WWII) not played a hand in his demise.

Anyway, here are a couple of aphorisms from the novels (vs film) you might use when your young friend are criticizing Charlie:

1. "The tongue of age speaks with accumulated wisdom and is heard gladly, but the tongue of youth should save it's strength" (The Black Camel, 1929)

2. "The ignorant are never defeated in argument" (Charlie Chan Carries On, 1930)

And if they're REALLY getting on your nerves:

3. "The guest who lingers too long deteriorates like unused fish" (Behind That Curtain, 1928)

Ha, ha, I couldn't resist. Lou

Dear Angel,

PHEW! Your texts are marathons! But, I definitely agree. Yes, thinking is evidently a burden today. What passes for "entertainment" underscores your analysis. The style today is to GRAPHICALLY spell out everything rather than have viewers fill in the blanks with their own minds. It's very sad, and this mental laziness permeates our current culture today.

Like the little Dutch boy, we can only plug the growing number of leaks in the **** with our fingers...but, eventually, we run out of little Dutch boys and fingers.

Take care, thank you, and see you at the Chat...

Sincerely,
Rush