Busses in Nairobi are called Matatus. They are painted bight colors and are loud.
70% of the population use them for transportation. They are cheap and convenient, but like everything else in Nairobi, they are chaotic.
The name comes from Swahili meaning three. It is unclear as to three what, but it is commonly believed it refers to a coin worth about ten cents which would equate to 30 cents per ride.
Atomic Blonde is long on style but short on substance. More art and less matter you might say. The plot is a little messy and hard to follow. But that didn’t seem to matter too much to me while watching it as it was gorgeous to look and riveted my attention throughout its 115 minute run time.
The movie takes place in Berlin, on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the cold war among the shifting alliances of the various powers, super and otherwise. Charlize Theron plays Loraine Broughton, an MI6 spy, who is sent to Berlin to deal with an espionage ring that has recently killed an undercover agent. It is her mission to root out a suspected double agent. Plenty of mayhem and action sequences ensue.
I normally don’t like action thriller movies but this is a cut above the rest and is done extraordinarily well. The director, David Leitch, was himself a stuntman on many movies and co-directed the cult classic John Wick. This is his directorial debut.
Charlize Theron is a wonder as the ice cold action hero of this thriller doing hand to hand combat with an assortment of Russian goons and East German Secret Police. She is gorgeous to look at and a sexual bombshell.
The action set pieces and stunts just keep on coming and are extremely well orchestrated as a finely tuned choreographed ballet of violence. They are clever, original, and brilliantly executed.
Great summer fun, two thumbs way up!
The editors of WordPress have chosen “Lust” as the word of the day for my daily inspiration. I am happy to accommodate them with my own interpretation and inspired rendering of this volatile, combustible, and knocked out loaded word.
I take you to the lust capitals of the world, two sister cites really, which gives an extra added dimension to the word lust, if you catch my meaning.
So here we have visual evidence of the lusty nature of these two great cities: Philadelphia and Paris.
A Philly stripper goes into the Candy Store for stripper supplies.
“Of all the worldly Passions, lust is the most intense.”
-Buddha
Purple Orchid, Philadelphia
“She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it.”
– Charles Bukowski
Ozz Gentleman’s Club, Philadelphia
“Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.”
― Blaise Pascal
Club Ozz, Philadelphia
“I live for sex. I celebrate it, and relish the electricity of it, with every fibre of my being. I can see no better reason for being alive.”
― Fiona Thrust
Sex Shop on South Street in Philly
“The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not—when they strayed from the straight and narrow it was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Leather and Latex, Philly
“Lust’s Passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.”
-Marquis de Sade
Moulin Rouge in Paris where girls who can Cancan
“Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.”
– Marquis de Sade
Pussy’s Gentleman’s Club, Paris
“I can resit anything but temptation.”
– Oscar Wilde
Sex Shop, Paris
“There’s something here, my dear boy, that you don’t understand yet. A man will fall in love with some beauty, with a woman’s body, or even a part of a woman’s body (a sensualist can understand that) and he’ll abandon his own children for her, sell his father and mother, and his country, Russia, too. If he’s honest, he’ll steal; if he’s humane, he’ll murder; if he’s faithful, he’ll deceive.”
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
La Diva, Paris
“Only the united beat of sex and the heart can create ecstasy.”
-Anais Nin
New Girl’s, Paris
“To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth – I count that as something of a miracle.”
-Henry Miller
Paris Museum of Erotic Art
All photos by me.
Th Gates of Hell, Auguste Rodin
The Gates of hell is a sculpture by Auguste Rodin that depicts a scene from Dante’s The Divine Comedy. There were three bronze casts made; they reside in The Musee Rodin in Paris, The Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, and the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno Park, Tokyo.
This photo was taken in Philadelphia.
“Do you always wear black?”
“Yes. It is more exciting when I take my clothes off.”
“Do you have to talk like a whore?”
“You do not know very much about whores, amigo. They are always most respectable. Except of course the very cheap ones.”
“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”
-William Shakespeare, from Julius Caesar
Young Parisian couple, about a generation apart, one reading a book the other a cell phone.
Before there were cell phones there were laptops. Before there were laptops there were TV screens. Before there were TV screens there were books. I’m reading a book right now, which is what I am usually doing. You would be surprised how much trouble I used to get into just for reading books. I have been called anti-social. Bosses didn’t like it. One of my wives tossed my books out into the backyard into a mud puddle. And my own mother come into my room one day, and tipped my bookcase over, spilling my books out onto the floor. What was a poor boy to do?
Most of the time nowadays people don’t seem to care much if I am reading a book. They are too busy with their own noses stuck into their cell phones.
Next time you get a chance, try reading a book. Remember, Mark Twain once said, those who do not read have no advantage over those who can’t read.
An excellent production last night of Julius Caesar. It comes at a most propitious moment in time. Lots of parallels to what is going on in our own political landscape. Director Matt Wallace continues to produce some of the most exciting Shakespeare that you are ever likely to see. I have been going to see Shakespeare in the Park since the 1970’s and I can say without reservation that it just keeps getting better and better. The acting is first rate, the direction and staging are superb and the technical aspects such as lighting and sound are first class. Kudos to the costume designer! Kentucky Shakespeare continues to break records for audience attendance. Do yourself a favor and catch one or more of the shows this season. Keep Will Free!
I have always loved bridges….I have been photographing them my whole life. This in one of my all time favorite bridges in the world which spans the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Camden. Informally it is known as the Ben Franklin Bridge. Work began on January 6, 1922. At the peak of construction, 1,300 people worked on the bridge, and 15 died during its construction. The bridge opened to traffic on July 1, 1926, three days ahead of its scheduled opening on the nation’s 150th anniversary. At completion, its 1,750-foot span was the world’s longest suspension bridge.
Ghost Dog 