John Carradine in Milan

John Carradine didn't need special effects prosthetics when guest starring opposite his grandson David in Kung Fu. His hands are gnarled, and he looks the part of a blind elderly cripple. Perhaps, despite his crepe wrinkled face, he did not have his grandson's range. This might have something to do with his training in theater as a Shakespearean, or perhaps vaunted legacy Jewish liberals like Ed Spielman, who created the cult classic martial arts serial for Burbank, weren't around to apply their intellect to give this Don Juan something better to do than lose a battle of wits against Greek goddesses, but Spielman's writers take us through the inevitable paces of rehabilitation law which existed in my childhood days, days when David Carradine was still an on going New Age concern. Kung Fu is a paean for the counter culture of my era. Disillusioned hippies get to see one of their own defeat monopolistic tyrants, whether in China-- Burbank's version-- which isn't all that more stereotypical than Beijing's version in the 21st century where Michelle Yech, for all intents and purposes, is the Asiatic supergirl, linear abstract fairytale heroine skillfully merged into the Chinese tradition, which bears some relation to conventions taught in Egyptology.

John Carradine's con artist may be blind, but the holy priest shows him what he's still capable of discerning, taking grand daddy through the liberal ideology of no pity, which collapses in the condensed span of serial time as John senior marginalizes himself, a frail old man, clearing the path for David's superstardom, which David radicalizes in his seventies, in turn. His last performance, on Mental, was nothing short of a fait accompli, a near virtuoso rebellion completed in a silent 50 minute arc, with a creative genius rivaling Verlaine's operatic intricacy, as if to pre-stage his ironic, speculative, death in Thailand, an auto-erotic exercise mishandled, taking a life long capitalization of body art a bridge too far; perhaps seemingly preferable to his grandfather's multiple organ failure, but David never sold his audiences short. Caine might as well have been the living embodiment of the Jesus Prayer as he was an adherent of the Tao, and in more neo-realism applications, if David was going to be a ruthless bastard, he lived that murderous abandon to the point of enthrall. What woman wouldn't want to make love to this projection of apex masculinity?

This liberalism, in its apogee, foretells the doom of its own exhaustion, even if a palsied quadriplegic removes the personal experience from the equation, and the level of expectation. For example, taking a downgrade of 250 per commission to 15 dollars for Examiner posts was a resentment generating exercise, but Clarity Media promoted her to an AXS writer, doing original articles, 5 to 10 USD. Had she persevered, rather than giving the automated snags the finger, it would have generated more revenue than these exercises. Impulse control only aggrandizes how the deck is stacked, but is no less countermanded by the evidence that it is. Burbank's idealism hasn't altered the social realities on our ground game, whatever our nostalgia for its morality plays. It represents another reason to solidly remain in Toomey's camp, the relatively invisible tea party heir who bestowed mercy on Stony Brook, to little avail. Do I expect to get past the gateway to utilize his legislative agenda for my own?