Home Again

I’m back from my summer up North and not feeling it today.  At all. And I’ve got so much to do.  Work required my return.  I've got one of the cats with me.  The wife, daughter, other cat and dog remain in the rustic northern house in the woods for the time being.  

The trip back was interesting.  The house we've been living in all summer and staging to sell for an ill friend went on the market while I was still there.  I had to leave the house in the morning for showings which was convenient for picking up the rental car, but then I had to come back in the afternoon after the showings to trap the cat I took back with me and load up the car so got a bit of a late start  (really about the same too late time of day as when I drove up at the beginning of summer with both cats.)  It felt weird and wrong ruining Rizzo’s day like that but it couldn’t be helped.  He’s forgiven me, thankfully.  He seems to be ok with being back.  He knows he’s back because at dinner time he leads me to his favorite dining perch, the coffee table in the sun room even though I try to feed him on the stairs which is where I’d been feeding him before the summer for reasons I now forget.  

On my drive back, I got teary listening to songs my daughter introduced to my playlist DJ’ing on the car trips we used to take to the place over the years of our long history with it. (Manu Chao's Me gustas tu, Juniore's Ça balance, MGMT's Time to Pretend are particularly evocative of some of our dawn arrivals after driving up the coast overnight), but that’s just a hint of the mood.  Crating Rizzo was easier than at the start of the summer.  He didn't know what hit him.  When I put him in the car yowling, I told my wife I felt bad about it, and she said she was sad, and then we both kind of broke down in the driveway over the approaching end of an era.  The last 3 years of hell dealing remotely with the storm damage the house had suffered in high pandemic days when the owner became ill-- we stepped up as repayment for her generosity with the place over the years-- culminating in two months of residence to whip it into shape for the market, had made us both forget that it was ever good to be there.  (And truthfully, the summer didn’t really contradict any of that). But something about the way the cats really took to it reminded us, and Rizzo’s predicament of being suddenly ripped from it with no input before his time somehow encapsulated it.  We’re losing a good thing.  It’s too expensive and decrepit to keep for any benefit that the owner who can no longer take care of it would get from it, but it’s good to remember that before it got fucked up, it was good.  

The house to the south was still standing when I got back.  The plants are all dead.  It’s insanely hot.  But I was able to get back into a groove with it. 

Throughout all this, because money was tied up in the twists and turns of the summer project, I refrained from purchasing new books and spent the summer catching up on my reading backlog.   I just finished A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff, Alissa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos from 2019.  It is if anything more important now, but as I dug in, I was struck by how quaint the topic feels.  In 2023, no one talks about the GND anymore.  I know there are now plenty of critics on the left, but they are stooges.  Jimmy Dore’s latest move to woo the fascists he has been tailing since 2016, is to pretend climate change is a lie that elites are using to justify oppression.  The Platypus Society's Chris Cutrone urges that the phantom struggle to bring about the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a more pressing concern.   To the cosplaying left,  concern for climate change can be written off as a bourgeois distraction.  Too tied to the right wing electoral notions of fading left celebrities Bernie Sanders and AOC.  For his part, Biden by being the perfect dickwad demoncrap put the last nail in the coffin.  We are all doomers now by default. I know I am anyway.

What I don’t get is that the description in this book and elsewhere of the civic possibilities for the GND -- a requirement for both public support to pass it and for the public will to carry it out aside from being a vision  and a pathway for a carbonless future-- strike me as being so incredibly appealing that for climate skeptics among the 99% it should be enough to support it.  Public utilities that actually serve their customers instead of their stockholders or their donors.  Abundant fast, clean, comfortable public transportation (I took a subway from the airport where I dropped off the rental at the western terminus to my suburb three stops from the Eastern terminus.  It was a long trip and half way in it dawned on me – my inability to get comfortable in any way on the system's newest, very expensive cars was purposely engineered by somebody at some corporate bureaucrat's request.  The unyielding seats have no cushioning and while they look like they are shaped like a human back, it's the back of someone with a giant torso and very short legs.  There is no leg room in any seat that faces forward or backward.  They’ve angled the heater vents so you can’t rest your foot on top of them.  If you turn sideways and try to lean against the window for a change, there’s a recess under the window that makes an edge that sticks into your back.  I later googled,"are subway seats designed to be uncomfortable?" and some site that was no longer available did have a cached page that indicated it’s a measure to keep the homeless from riding the trains indefinitely.  I was livid and in pain by the time I got to my station.) what was I saying??  Oh yeah, short work weeks, abundant public spaces and free activities, people centered programs and works—a jobs guarantee for all who want it, housing, education and medicare for all, walkable cities with extra technology and services for those who have difficulty walking.  In short a world designed for the people who live in it.  Global cooperation.  Freedom of movement. Freedom to be a hermit.  I mean, to me it sounds like paradise.  

[Trigger warning: Massive cursing ahead] Why are people so ready to be inclined to listen only to the assholes who want paradise exclusively for themselves? The thing that pissed me off about the subway seat is that it is so fucking typical of this motherfucking world now.  Assholes who were not elected (or selected) unilaterally deciding that it’s more important to make homeless people uncomfortable on our trains than to give them shelter or to make train passengers comfortable.  No wonder houseless immiseration is up and subway ridership is down.

Although the neoliberal world is dying, we are still very much beholden to its worldview that deems corporate profits and an inflexibly elite-centric social order of higher priority than our own freedom, comfort and security.

I hear many on the left indicating that while they will vote for Cornel West in November or for Biden if he's still around (or for whomever is put forth by the democrats to defeat whoever the Republican is if he isn't), they intend to vote in the primary this coming spring for Marianne Williamson -- really the only candidate in the Democratic race with specific Green New Deal like items on her agenda among many other solitary progressive stands.  Good for them, but how are they going to vote for her if she's not on the ballot?  And why is she still polling at 10%?  This is nearly half of Joe Biden's closest challenger RFK, Jr who has recently said-- I shit you not-- "Climate change is being used to control us through fear. Freedom and free markets are a much better way to stop pollution."  For that matter why are Biden's numbers rising while his grip on reality is falling?  Leftists, it is beyond time to put your money where your mouth is and start openly proclaiming your support for the only candidate who is  talking about reparations and canceling student debt and talking to Gen Z'ers, to Cop City protesters, to Starbucks organizers.  Time is wasting.  We have a planet to win.  Marianne 2024.

Monk

Alice Longyu Gao would like a word with you:

 Are you paying attention?

Status ¿Qué?

Briahna Joy Gray had a lively-- and frequently outright tense-- debate recently with Kyle Kulinski and Krystal Ball on the topic of Cornel West, Biden and Trump.  Full disclosure, since I live in a solidly Blue State, while I intend to work for Marianne Williamson in the Democratic primary, in the unlikely event that she loses the primary and Joe Biden is ultimately renominated as the head of the Democratic Ticket next year,  with Cornel West as the Green Party nominee, I am considering voting third party for the first time since 2000.*  If I lived in a swing state, in a contest between Trump, Biden and Cornel West, things would have to be pretty hopeless with Joe Biden for me not to do my part to thwart the only other likely winner by holding my nose and voting for the Democrat.

As for the debate participants, I am a bit agnostic about the latter two.  My introduction to Gray was as press secretary for Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign, an office that I thought she excelled at.  While I ultimately did not join her in withholding my vote for Biden in the general election following the concerted effort by every Democratic rival, following Bernie's third consecutive win with his resounding victory in the Nevada caucuses, to pull out of the primary race and back Joe Biden-- ultimately succeeding in forcing Bernie to suspend his campaign prematurely as the pandemic began to rage-- I did not fault her.  But in late 2020 into early 2021 (and waaaaaaayyyy beyond) I found myself souring a bit on her political wisdom for her promotion of the vile Tulsi Gabbard backing "jaggoff" Jimmy Dore while clinging stubbornly to his failed initiative to use withholding of support of Nancy Pelosi's re-election as Speaker of the House as an opportunity for House progressives to force a floor vote on Medicare for All,  long after it fell on its face immediately before the January 6 Capitol riots.   After its failure, BJG and the Force the Vote contingent, rather than regroup on the mission of building solidarity on the left and among single payer sympathizers for applying pressure on the still narrowly democratic congress and senate to push through Medicare for all (and certainly not alone in dropping the ball),  chose to continue to use the failure of Dore's hashtag cause as a cudgel with which to club those who took issue with the tactic.  Beyond that narrow sectarian rift, although I was a huge fan of her regular Feel the Bern podcasts throughout the Bernie campaign, I began to find her obtuse debating style on her own aptly named Bad Faith podcast almost exclusively with those of the left that she disagreed with on seemingly the wrong side of almost any dumb, inflammatory, diversionary twitter controversy you could name (Kyle Rittenhouse, the courting of fascists for a red-brown alliance, the outing of a doxxing, anti-trans TikTok troll, any of many infractions of members of the squad) an almost guaranteed turnoff.

In the debate at hand, while all participants seemed to agree with each other (and with me) about Biden's lack of appeal as a candidate in and of himself (Kulinski's cataloging of leftist "wins" that exceeded his expectations, impressive as it was, still at best barely offset the extent of bad that he has effected as surely as he was expected to), Kulinski and Ball started off by asserting that, his failures and disappointments aside, what he had accomplished so far-- including near the top of his achievements unprecedented strengthening of the Labor Relations Board (never mind his selling out of the railway workers last winter) and cutting drone strikes to 10% of Trump's record while exiting from Afghanistan (before imposing sanctions on Kabul and digging in on Ukraine)-- nevertheless demonstrated an objective rationale for preferring Biden above Trump.  Right off the bat Gray lost me by actually defying Kulinski and Ball, in a field that includes Ron De Santis, Vivek Ramaswami, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence and Chris Christie, to define where the stopping point would be for declaring the Republican challenger worse than the Democrat.  With the question turned back on her about how bad the Republican had to be for Gray to concede that siding with the Democrat as a means of forestalling the Republican's win would be the option most likely to lead to hoped for outcomes, Gray similarly demurred to conjecture.

The tell for me is when Krystal Ball who seemed unable to get Gray to frame electoral politics as a means of advancing one's goals rather than as a contest of voter approval of one over another interchangeable professional politician (in Ball's words, "It's not about whether you're a Democrat or Republican; it's about how do you advance your goals.") asked Gray whether Joe Biden's defeat of any Republican challenger, versus Cornel West bringing the Green party to 5% in order to secure federal matching funds in future national elections was a more important outcome for the advancement of progressive goals, Gray adamantly dug her heels into the primacy of getting the Green Party to 5%.  This is not political strategy-- this is some combination of wishful thinking and biting your nose off to spite your face. (Ball reminded us that Ross Perot's Reform Party achieved the threshold in 1996 only to have Pat Buchanan all but assure the death of the party four years later with less than 1% of the popular vote in 2000, deflating the premise).  After all, why place your eggs in the basket of a party that refuses to be built?  Why not make your goal the commandeering of a party with actual power that stubbornly clings to the outdated neoliberal habits of an aging leadership that refuses to yield its reins?  Which goal is less realistic?  Which outcome has the best chance of making change that has material benefit to the 99%?  Or is the ultimate object of electoral politics just providing opportunities for voters to express their electoral purity every 4 years?

Deep into the conversation, the crux was reached.  According to Gray, Biden's triumph over the Republican will do nothing to advance what Gray believes "will be the ultimate path for leftist progress in the United States which is breaking the corporate duopoly."†  To this end, Gray is placing her hopes with the Green Party and other third party and independent efforts outside of the two major parties, and aiming to join forces with the Libertarian Party -- to date the entity that has had the most success (and money) in advocating for and to a small extent bringing about the elaborately low-concept tweak of Rank Choice Voting§ across the country.  This the participants agreed was a prerequisite to Green politics transcending the pursuit of the elusive 5% and beginning to achieve real power.  (Building the party from the ground up by building local power across the nation rather than from the top down by mattering only every 4 years in presidential contests does not seem to be on the table.)

Asked by Kulinski and Ball how, absent Rank Choice Voting in all but the very fewest districts, focussing on achieving the modest electoral goals of parties that have no hope of winning squares with the project of advancing the panoply of progressive goals, Gray said "I do think there is a failure to recognize the extent to which there is a validation that takes place of the status quo that people are trying to negotiate as they reckon with real gains that the Biden administration has effectuated."  I will confess the accusation that those who vote for the Democrat to avoid the Republican are validating the status quo hits my ears as blaming the victim.  It cruelly overlooks the dysfunction of the system that perpetually leaves voters with two terrible choices  one of which is going to win.  Some of us on the left have had it with the dysfunction and will not be party to it.  The rest of us are working with the cards that were dealt us, and it is "not even wrong" to say that the personal choice to try to mitigate what is guaranteed to be the least optimal choice in the general election as though lives depended on it -- because they do!-- represents an acquiescence to the status quo. 

To this point in the debate, I was prepared to write Gray off and declare Kulinski and Ball the winners on merit.  But at the end of what is accessible to non-subscribers of either podcast, Ball asked Gray-- shades of 2016-- hypothetically if on election night 2024 Joe Biden wins, does she rue that it wasn't Trump? or does she breathe a sigh of relief that it's Biden?  Gray's shockingly honest answer deeply instructed me:  

I don't care.  They're not my party. This gets characterized as a privileged position, that you don't care who wins, Trump or Biden.  My experience is that people who have been taking this position -- this is just anecdotal-- tend to be people who are at the lower end of the economic spectrum who do feel that their lives aren't meaningfully different under a Trump or a Biden and who would rather rock the boat and throw a monkey wrench in the machinery if there's even a fracture of a sliver of a chance that it has some outcome different from what they've been experiencing for their entire lives.

My reaction on transcribing her words reminded me of how I felt listening to a Revolutionary Blackout episode in January of this year in which I was apprised how even my modestly non-destitute struggle in America 2023 to participate in bringing about meaningful change is counterrevolutionary to those who are fighting for their lives.  By the force of her words, my eyes were at least temporarily opened once again to the dire stakes of scores of actual people that my hermetic lifestyle, impoverished and underwater as it is, permits me to overlook.  I'm grateful for the service, because it clarifies for me what my mission truly is.  

Recognizing that my neurotic, compulsive ineffectual stewardship of our dysfunctional electoral system as though it is doing any good is anathema to those who truly seem to lose either way due to circumstances beyond my control, I make it my mission to work to somehow unite my revolution with that of Briahna Joy Gray's informants from the Revolutionary Blackout underground.  I don't yet know how to get there, and it is premature for me to ask those opposite this gulf in the left to cooperate with me in the project of a total left reunification.  But I know where I need to head, and for that I'm grateful for this most instructive debate.

 ~~~~~

* While I expect Cornel West to be the candidate who most closely aligns with my own goals in the General election, I would only use the privilege of being able to vote for him without contributing to the loss of the lesser evil of the two main party candidates-- for me, that would be Biden if it were between Biden and Trump-- as a safe way of augmenting the signal of mass disapproval on the part of the electorate of the duopoly's menu.  The fact that some voters have this privilege over voter's in unsafe districts is yet another flaw in the electoral process.  I don't fault anyone anywhere for voting for the 3rd party candidate of their choice (as long as it's Cornel West).  As for helping the Green Party get to 5% for the sake of matching federal funds -- I couldn't care less!  

† I'm bound to remind anyone who reads footnotes of long-winded blog posts in dark corners of the internet, that if the United States used universal sortition as its method of selecting our leadership, all of the foregoing would be moot.

§ From my perspective, Ranked Choice Voting does not mean the duopoly is crushed and the Green Party wins.  It means Joe Biden wins because more Greens made him their second or third choice.  Rather than dredging a majority from polling the extent of voters' toleration for the self-selected slate of choices, see previous footnote.

Games People Play

Back in the 80's when Kevin Bacon's filmography was still quite young, a friend of ours proposed a game:  Name any two actors and then without help from any reference, trace a path between them via a chain of movies with overlapping costars. For instance, Marlon Brando and Paul Reubens can be linked like so:  Marlon Brando was in Superman with Margot Kidder who was in Amityville Horror with James Brolin who was in Pee Wee's Big Adventure with Paul Reubens.  My friend called the game Association-- although 20 years later, it became widely known as 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon based on the popularized factoid that you could connect any actor in Hollywood with Kevin Bacon via a chain of no more than 6 movies.  

Six Degrees, or Association, as my friend invented it in the 80s has become my daughter and my go-to game for down time.  We of course don't restrict ourselves to Kevin Bacon movies.  Rather we prefer picking unlikely pairs, usually with a theme-- e.g., Karen Black to Betty White.  (Spoiler follows: Betty White was in Advise & Consent with Henry Fonda who was in On Golden Pond with Jane Fonda who was in Coming Home with Bruce Dern who was in Family Plot with Karen Black.)  With us, the longer the chain, the better*, but probably the oddest game I ever played was with a co-worker.  I suggested finding a link between Louis Jourdan and Michael Jordan.  I figured this would be good for an afternoon.  My colleague came back almost immediately with Looney Tunes: Back in Action and Return of the Swamp Thing.  (Michael Jordan was in Looney Tunes, Louis Jourdan was in Return of the Swamp Thing and Heather Locklear was in both).  This was before Google.

I could play the game forever, but on the theory of Everything in Moderation, lately it has occurred to me that we should mix things up.  The requirement for a substitute is a game with simple rules and no equipment (or only readily available materials such as paper and pen).  Since my mind tends to go blank under pressure, it's occurred to me that perhaps I should start collecting a game chest of such games for future reference.  Some of the below may already be familiar to you, some are games invented to entertain on long (or even short) car trips, and some were invented by my daughter at my request.  To her, coming up with equipmentless games is a game in itself. The results are below.  Descriptions of play involve 2 players, but with each game, the number of players is scalable to the interest/boredom of the room.  Rules do not include details about scoring, but almost all could with a small amount of imagination be easily adapted for wagering.

Word by word story - (Equipment needed: vocabulary, grammar)  Each player takes turns adding words to an evolving story.  The words must be grammatical in the context of what has come before, otherwise all bets are off. ("Once" "upon" "a" "goat" "there" "were" "two" "fleas" "named" "Jennifer" "and" "Ringo". &c.).  As a variation, you could sing the words to create a song.

Change-a-letter - (Equipment needed: none)  Using words of an agreed upon length (3-6 letters generally), players take turns altering the last word spoken before their turn by one letter.  The object is to see how long they can keep a chain going. ("brain", "braid", 'brand", "bland", 'blind", "blink", "slink", etc)  Players may agree on whether and when words can be repeated and whether  they will allow shuffling of letters to prolong the chain.  ("purse", "usurp", "spurn", "prune", "prone", "phone", etc.)

Add-a-letter - As a variation of the above, Player 1 starts with a word of 1 letter, Player 2 then adds a letter to the first in any order to create a new word, and so on until no more words that both players can agree are words can be created.  (E.g., "a", "at", "tar", "rant", "train", "rating", etc.)

Alphabet safari - (Equipment needed: Car and destination, child in backseat, short term memory, knowledge of alphabet, ability to compartmentalize driving safety and game playing)  The object is simple.  As you travel streets and roads on your way to your destination, cooperate on finding each letter of the alphabet in turn.  No, you can't save letters when you see them.  If you are on G and pass a liquor store, you cannot save the Q.  Just put it out of your mind.  (Don't worry there will be plenty of other liquor stores.  Just watch out for that pedestrian trying to cross over in front of it.)

Antonyms - This was presented to me as a Mensa game, but don't hold that against it.  Player 1 says a noun, verb or adjective.  Player 2 must come up with its opposite, but the catch is that the opposite may begin only with either an R or an S-- simple rules yet much harder than it sounds. The notion of antonym in practice is as fluid as both players agree for it to be and fluidity is rewarded with fun.  E.g., for "good", if both players accept "rancid" as an opposite, so it shall be.  Does "baby" have an antonym?  Would you accept "senior" or "sire"? 

Hinky Pinky - Player 1 comes up with a 2-word rhyming phrase.  The rhyming word must match the number of syllables of the first word-- e.g., Merry Berry is allowed but Contrary Berry is not.  The rhymer then comes up with a clue for the phrase, such as "Happy fruit" and indicates the number of syllables by saying whether it is a Hink Pink (rhyming 1 syllable words), a Hinky Pinky (2 syllable words) a Hinkity Pinkity (3 syllable words) and so forth.  Player 2 then tries to guess the phrase.  Hours of fun for the players and annoyance for the bystanders.

Riddle for a Rhyme - This is a loose variation of the above invented by my niece when she got bored with Hinky Pinky.  Player one thinks of a word -- e.g., "Score", and then gives a word that rhymes with it-- e.g., "Door"-- as a clue.  Player 2 then tries to guess the word, but instead of guessing directly, asks yes or no questions based on their guess.  E.g, Player 2 might say, "Does your word come after three but before five?"  If Player 1 is wrong, Player 2's reply  has to include the rhyme that Player 2 had in mind-- in the case of the example, "No, the word isn't four."  This is the only game I know  in which the clue giver is also a guesser and vice versa conveniently eliminating the wait for either role  

Band names - (A daughteral contribution)  Almost as simple as it sounds the idea is for Player 1 to free associate a name for a band.  The quality of the name is not important.  The challenge for Player 2 is to fit the name to a genre, to a first album title, and to the name of the band's biggest hit.  E.g.,  Player 1 blurts out: "Pretzel Kingdom"; Player 2:  "The genre is polka.  The first album is 'Once around the Kielbasa'.  Biggest hit: 'I told you not to look.'"   

Remake - (another daughteral contribution) Name a classic movie or television program and re-cast it with contemporary actors.  The re-casting can be apropos or it can give it a new twist.  My daughter has been proposing a new Columbo.  In her mind, it should still be set in the 1970s.  She has several ideas for casting villains:  Jeff Goldblum as a photographer who snaps, both literally and figuratively; Steve Buscemi as a college professor being blackmailed by a student; Idris Elba as a popular disc jockey about to be exposed for taking payola by an up-and-coming star.  In a way, Rian Johnson has already re-cast the title role perfectly with Natasha Lyonne in Poker Face, but my daughter had two notions for  Columbo that promise 2 different but equally interesting directions for the role:  in the more traditional vein, Bob Odenkirk; and for something completely different (go with her on this one) Joaquin Phoenix.

Geography  - I recently saw them playing this on an episode of Mad Men.  Players take turns naming a country.  Each country must begin with the same letter that ends the previous player's country, without repeating any already named.  E.g. "Barbados" "Suriname" "Eritrea" "Azerbaijan" (Your turn.)   Play proceeds until someone is stumped or the neighbors complain.  For variety, players can use different geographical categories, or to really live it up, a free for all in which any category is fair game: "Antwerp" "Puerto Rico" "Orinoco" "Okinawa" &c.

I can make you laugh - (Equipment needed: Sense of humor, or barring that, fearlessness)  There are several ways to play, most famously the freestyle version where a player who is It tries to make other players laugh by any means other than tickling-- funny faces, extemporaneous jokes, etc.  My favorite variation takes a page from Name That Tune -- Players take turns "at bat".  The player who is up announces "I can make you laugh with x words" where x is a number between 1 and 10, then proceeds to do it.  Over many years of playing, in my circles we tend to settle on 2.  ("Flap doodle." "Sticky bits." "Mouse knickers.")  Play passes back and forth until someone succeeds.  (And then repeats indefinitely).  The anticipation tends to work in the player who is It's favor.  We've even had success with 1 word.  (  "Armpit." "Stench." "Buffalo.")

Eye roll contest - This variation of the above was suggested by my daughter for some reason.  Same as above although the object is to provoke not laughter but exasperation.  The book I'm reading at the moment tends to be exceptional at this game with non-ironic sentences along the lines of: "Joe would have called the police, except for the inconvenient fact that he'd been dead for a week."

Initials -  (Equipment needed: A piece of paper; a writing utensil) Write 10 or 20 letters down the page.  It could be anything -- the alphabet, a word or a famous phrase, a fragment of a lyric.  Next to each letter, write an accompanying letter -- similarly, any sequence, even continuing the phrase.  What you should have when you're done is a set of initials.   E.g. in the below, on the left side I've started the alphabet A to E; on the right side, I've used the  first letter of the mnemonic Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge:

AE  
BG  
CB  
DD 
EF 

The object of the game is to come up with a celebrity or famous person for each pair of initials:

AE - Albert Einstein

BG - Betty Grable 

CB - Charles Barkley

DD - David Duchovny 

EF - Edna Ferber

Have fun! Pass the time! Play responsibly!

~~~~~

*  Peter Lorre to Mary Tyler Moore (a.k.a. Laura Petrie):  Peter Lorre was in Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant who was in North by Northwest with Eva Marie Saint who was in On the Waterfront with Marlon Brando who was in The Godfather with Diane Keaton who was in Reds with Warren Beatty who was in Heaven Can Wait with  Julie Christie who was in Don't Look Now with Donald Sutherland who was in  Ordinary People with Mary Tyler Moore.