A petition against Basel’s staging of the Eurovision Song Contest in May 2025

Today in my mailbox was a petition from the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland to start a referendum against the staging of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest in Basel next May: "35 Million [Swiss Francs] in tax money for a propaganda show?" Given what I know about this small, "national-conservative" Swiss political party, which is against homosexuals, trans people, and abortion, I assumed they were against the "propaganda" of a "gender ideology" they would claim was bering spread by Nemo, the non-binary winner of the 2024 ESC. But to my surprise, they dislike the ESC for the "occultism and Satanism" that they claim some of the contest's performers have been spreading. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 October 2024)

"When the defendant [Donald J. Trump] lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office"

In the "Government’s motion for immunity determinations" filed yesterday, 2 October 2024, by Special Counsel Jack Smith in United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, the "Factual Proffer" that "provides a detailed statement of the case that the Government intends to prove at trial" begins with a straightforward claim: "When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office" (3). This is not actually disputed by former President Trump's legal team. After all, they did not defend him by saying that he did not commit crimes; they defended him by arguing that, as President, he was immune from prosecution for those crimes. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 October 2024) 

“Such stuff as dreams are made of” at the end of John Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon” (1941)

At the end of "The Maltese Falcon", John Huston's 1941 adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel, Detective Tom Polhaus (Ward Bond) picks up the titular falcon, asks Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) what it is, and is puzzled by Spade's response: "Such stuff as dreams are made of." The quotation comes from a speech by Prospero in William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" (1610-11): "We are such stuff / as dreams are made on." In the film, Spade knows his Shakespeare, while Polhaus apparently does not. Yet as actors, both Bogart and Bond surely knew the line. Actors, after all, are immersed in cultural history in ways the characters they play are usually not. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 October 2024)

Ward Bond and Humphrey Bogart in “The Maltese Falcon"

Elisha Cook, Jr., in “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) and “The Big Sleep” (1946) – and in a 1949 adaptation of “The Great Gatsby"

Today, when I saw a man tailing Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) in John Huston's 1941 film of Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon", I was reminded that I have always liked Elisha Cook, Jr., who plays that henchman of Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet). Cook also appears in another Bogart film, "The Big Sleep" (Howard Hawks, 1946). Otherwise, I know hardly anything he made, but Cook also played Klipspringer in Richard Maibaum's 1949 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby", a film I had never heard of before. In "The Maltese Falcon", Cook is on the receiving end of Bogart's memorable line, "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 October 2024)