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  • Wally Conger

Movie Review: SECRET HONOR (1984) Dec 10, 2015

Trump, Hillary, Bernie... Yes, goddammit, it's another election year. And it's a good time to beef yourself up with some of the great political films of the past. Last night, I revisited one of my favorite, little-seen, 1980s movie classics -- the late Robert Altman’s Secret Honor. I saw the original stage production starring Philip Baker Hall (remember him as Seinfeld’s library cop?) in 1984 at the Los Angeles Actors’ Theater, a teeny 35-seat auditorium tucked away on a side street off Hollywood Boulevard. Hall’s one-man show was loud, profane, savage, and amazingly sympathetic. And I’ve always felt grateful that...

By Wally Conger Vote4 1

BOOK REVIEW: Murray Rothbard’s “Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy” Nov 17, 2015

This slim book compiles three Murray Rothbard articles: “Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy,” first published in the August 1984 issue of World Market Perspective, and “The Treaty That Wall Street Wrote” and an accompanying sidebar called “Who’s Who for the Canal Treaty,” which were both published some three decades ago in the long-defunct Inquiry magazine. This book is a terrific tool for the historical arsenals of those who would fight the world money/power elites. Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy is a great example of Rothbard’s trenchant and brilliant historical analysis. He saw American history as the...

By Wally Conger Vote3 0

Your poop can save lives and even make you money Nov 6, 2015

[Cross-posted at WallyConger.com] Shit, you can make money doing almost anything! And by shit," I mean that literally. A Facebooker has alerted me that a non-profit company called OpenBiome is paying for stool samples! The samples are needed to create fecal transplant treatments for people infected with Clostridium difficile, a bacteria that causes about 14,000 deaths a year and is highly resistant to antibiotics. The treatment requires the collection and screening of stool samples, which may be turned into ready-to-administer frozen fecal capsules for hospitals. OpenBiome will pay up to $13,000 annually for your commitment to provide five stool samples...

By Wally Conger Vote2 1

Sorry, gang, but dead is dead Oct 27, 2015

I quit watching “The Walking Dead” a season or so back, but I couldn’t avoid the news yesterday. It was all over freakin’ social media and the “world wide web.” Wails of anguish. Gnashing of teeth. Cries for revenge. You see, last Sunday night, the folks over at “The Walking Dead” killed off a beloved character. And not just ANY “beloved character.” This fella’d been with the series for the long haul. Since pretty much the beginning. Viewers invested a lotta time and, yes, even love into this character. Now that character is gone. Forever. Of course, diehard fans of...

By Wally Conger Vote8 10

It’s time to dump your “bottom-feeders” Aug 4, 2015

Marketing wunderkind Ben Settle once shared a piece of philosophy with me that’s so brilliant in both its depth and simplicity that I've lived by it ever since. Ready? “I’d rather have four quarters than a hundred pennies.” OK, we’re not talking pocket change here. (Although you’ve gotta admit carrying just four coins is better than lugging 100 of ’em. And it’s sure easier to count out four quarters than it is a crapload of pennies.) Ben was talking about customers. His point was he’d rather have four high-ticket, top-dog clients who take him seriously than a hundred “bottom-feeders” (as...

By Wally Conger Vote13 2

Face it, most of your ideas are gonna suck Jul 30, 2015

Here’s one of my favorite bits from Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (a movie stuffed with favorite bits, by the way)... It happens at a cocktail party. The place is filled with so-called Beautiful People. The camera pans around the room and you overhear one guy say, “Right now it’s only a notion, but I think I can get money to make it into a concept ... and later turn it into an idea.” The scene brings a couple of thoughts to mind. First, most of us spend more time dicking around with ideas than we do acting on them. As...

By Wally Conger Vote15 3

Not my circus, not my monkeys Jul 28, 2015

Deb saw it first, presented as a meme on Facebook… “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” She shared it with me, then we kinda made it our mantra. “Not my circus, not my monkeys. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Not my circus, not my monkeys.” It’s actually a Polish saying, and it’s good to remember when the world seems to demand that you get involved in each and every one of its dramas. Two co-workers are battling over who used the last ream of copy paper in the cabinet, and each is bugging you with their side of the...

By Wally Conger Vote7 0

A weird, rainy day with wise old Mr. Sherlock Holmes Jul 22, 2015

Sunday was an unusual day for July here on California's central coast. It rained, sometimes in torrents, with lots of lightning and thunder. And the electricity in our neighborhood was kaput for most of the day. So we got out of the house to see the new movie Mr. Holmes, starring Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes. McKellen plays a 93-year-old Holmes, long retired to a small farm on the Sussex Downs to keep bees, just as Arthur Conan Doyle reported in the original stories. As a diehard Sherlockian, I loved the movie and recommend it without hesitation. Sir Ian has...

By Wally Conger Vote7 0

A guy sent me 400 bucks this week, just because Jul 18, 2015

[Cross-posted at wallyconger.com] I’ve just gotta share this. Three summers ago, I unloaded a raggedy-ass copy of Amazing Spider-Man #1 I’d carried around with me for some 40 years. The edges of the cover were “chipped” (as they say in the comic book collecting biz) and its colors were faded. The staples were tight but a bit rusty. The book’s inside pages were dingy and yellowed. Shit, the magazine was 50 years old and looked more haggard than I do. Anyway, I’d lost any sentimental attachment I had with that comic a long time before, wanted some cash to play...

By Wally Conger Vote26 2

Movie Review: ARMY OF SHADOWS Jul 12, 2015

When film director Jean-Pierre Melville's L’Armée des Ombres (Army of Shadows) was released initially in France in 1969, the critical response was hostile. One reason was certainly the political climate at that time. Another may have been disappointment that Melville was interrupting his run of gangster-noir masterpieces -- Le deuxième souffle (1966), Le samouraï (1967), Le cercle rouge (1970), and Un flic (1972) -- with a movie about the French Resistance. Whatever the reason, by the time Army of Shadows finally arrived in the U.S. a few years ago, it was 37 years old and the director had been dead...

By Wally Conger Vote16 1

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