This week, Woody Allen‘s 2016 title (for as we all know, there’s one each year), “Cafe Society,” starring Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Steve Carell, Corey Stoll, Blake Lively and Anna Camp, opens after a warm reception as the opening film at the most recent Cannes Film Festival. You can read our take from Cannes here, or hang on to scroll through and see where it lands on the list below, but we thought this would be a good time to gussy up our previous sprawling two-part Allen retrospective, and because we’ve been a little harmonious around here of late and miss the sounds of sobbing and breaking crockery, to rank it.
Weathering personal scandal and coming in and out of fashion like flares, Allen’s been at constant work as a director for five decades now, and “Cafe Society” marks his 47th theatrically-released feature. Which means we have a lot to get through, so let’s get straight to it, shall we? Here, ranked worst to best, are all of Woody Allen’s theatrical features —with any list this long, there’s bound to be massive disagreement, so remember, the comments section awaits your ire. Or your congratulations, on the slim chance you agree with all of it.
10. “Sleeper” (1973)
Of all the people to be unfrozen 200 years in the future by the rebel underground, scientists unearth the pod containing neurotic jazz-musician/health-store owner Miles Monroe (Allen). With the country ruled by a despot, Miles must infiltrate the government’s uber-secret “Ares Project,” with the help of reluctant hippie poet Luna (Diane Keaton), who eventually turns to the underground cause. Parodying every popular sci-fi trope of the time (a very HAL-like all-seeing computer, for example) and pulling heavily from the works of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin (especially in the robot butler sequence) “Sleeper” is utterly charming fun, that also makes time for a little social critique, like the impermanence of scientific “fact” (a dialogue between two people reveals that fatty, greasy foods and cigarettes are actually extremely healthy) and the modern world’s erosion of intimacy (the brilliant “Orgasmatron”). But though it’s surprisingly trenchant in some of its observations, in the main, it’s blissfully silly fun, building to a cloning scene which might be the most joyous example of extended Keaton/Allen chemistry and tomfoolery he ever filmed.
9. “Sweet and Lowdown” (1999)
Though Allen has missed the mark as often as he’s hit it in his mid-to-later periods, this film is a shining example of everything the writer/director can do right when he’s firing on all cylinders. He gets revelatory, surprising, Oscar-nominated performances out of Sean Penn, as narcissistic fictional guitar player Emmet Ray (transparently based on the legendary Django Reinhardt), and Samantha Morton as mute, adorable Hattie, Emmet’s lover. He uses a faux documentary style, despite the authentic and textured period details, to augment the grandeur of Ray’s life and artistry, with smart dialogue that is quippy and fun highlighting one of the best scripts he’s ever written in terms of balancing dramatic and comedic moments. Moreover, Allen is a lifelong lover and performer of jazz, and this is one of his biggest love letters to the tunes, myths and larger-than-life personalities that populate the genre. As such it is as fundamental to Allen’s personal filmmaking style as the New York City of “Manhattan” or the May-December romance of “[insert title here.]”
Woody Allen – Concerto Parigi 1996 – Wild Man Blues Woody Allen & The Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there […]
______________ Gauguin’s 3 Questions Paul Gauguin, now regarded as a French Post-Impressionist artist, was not received well by his old painter friends while living. And having abandoned his wife and children he had no options or resources for getting by. He never found artistic success, either critically or financially in his lifetime. However, there is […]
______________ Woody Allen CRISIS IN SIX SCENES Crisis in Six Scenes S01E01 CZ titulky Something about television brings out the nostalgist in Woody Allen (well, y’know, even more than usual), and understandably – it’s a medium inextricably tied to his own early days. He got his start as a staff writer for The Colgate Comedy […]
First Look at Woody Allen’s Next Movie ‘Wonder Wheel’ Posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2017 by Jack Giroux Another period piece is coming our way from writer-director Woody Allen. We know little about his latest movie, titled Wonder Wheel, which is typical of Allen’s movies. Rarely are character and plot details shared early on. But we […]
_ Woody Allen Bob Hope Tonight Show 1971 Woody Allen Actor Director Writer Date Title (click to view) Studio Lifetime Gross / Theaters Opening / Theaters Rank 7/15/16 Cafe Society LGF $11,103,205 631 $359,289 5 18 7/17/15 Irrational Man SPC $4,030,360 925 $175,312 7 36 7/25/14 Magic in the Moonlight SPC $10,539,326 964 $412,095 17 […]
__ The Woody Allen Special [1969] (Guests: Candice Bergen, Billy Graham and the 5th Dimension) Published on Sep 8, 2016 For all the Woody Allen/television fans, here is the rare 1969 CBS special! Featuring the flawless stand-up of Woody, and skits such as: Woody and Candice having to rehearse nude for an artistic play. A […]
__ Woody Allen The Dean Martin Show Happy Birthday Woody Allen: 15 Quotes By The Maverick Filmmaker News18.com First published: December 1, 2016, 3:30 PM IST | Updated: December 1, 2016 One of the most celebrated filmmakers of Hollywood, Woody Allen turns 81 today. Born and raised in Brooklyn as Allen Konigsberg he is arguably […]
___________ Justin Timberlake Talks ‘Trolls,’ Family Life and His New Album With Pharrell Williams Andrew Barker Senior Features Writer@barkerrant TOM MUNRO FOR VARIETY NOVEMBER 1, 2016 | 10:00AM PT Settling into a hotel bar in Soho after a long day shooting a film for Woody Allen in the Bronx, Justin Timberlake wastes no time ordering […]
_ Woody Allen – standup – ’65 – RARE! Happy 81st Birthday, Woody Allen December 2, 2016 1 Comment Woody Allen turns 81 today. And he shows no signs of slowing down. Allen spent his 80th year being remarkably prolific, even by his own standards. The end of 2015 saw that year’s film, Irrational Man, […]
_ Everything We Know About Woody Allen’s 2017 Film With Kate Winslet And Justin Timberlake October 16, 2016 3 Comments Woody Allen has, it seems, wrapped production on his 2017 Film. The new film stars Kate Winlset and Justin Timberlake. And despite some very public days of shooting, We still don’t know that much […]
I started this serieson my letters andpostcards toHugh Hefner backin September when I read of thepassing of Mr. Hefner. There are manymore to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite cities!!!!
Today is Feb 7 so I want to quote from Proverbs 7. Good advice today from anyone in New Orleans like me.
1-5 Dear friend, do what I tell you; treasure my careful instructions. Do what I say and you’ll live well. My teaching is as precious as your eyesight—guard it! Write it out on the back of your hands; etch it on the chambers of your heart. Talk to Wisdom as to a sister. Treat Insight as your companion. They’ll be with you to fend off the Temptress— that smooth-talking, honey-tongued Seductress.
—–
Don’t you wish your sons would be faithful to the wife of their youth? It is God’s plan and the best plan by far!!!
I wrote to Hefner in an earlier letter these words:
Don’t you see that Solomon was right when he observed life UNDER THE SUN without God in the picture and he then concluded in Ecclesiastes 2:11:
“All was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained UNDER THE SUN.”
Notice this phrase UNDER THE SUN since it appears about 30 times in Ecclesiastes. Francis Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”
Many hundreds of years ago there reigned a great and powerful King who had all the world at his fingertips. He had built a mighty Kingdom whose capital had become the center of world trade and his borders stretched from one corner of the known world to the next. Lacking in nothing, he truly had it all. A private zoo, a private navy, thousands of horses, immeasurable wealth, and no less than 1000 women to do with as he pleased.
In the end, the King reflected on all that he’d done in his life and concluded, “Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”
I am of course describing King Solomon of the Bible and I quite suspect that the recently deceased Hugh Hefner’s life wasn’t all that different in the end.
Indeed, the above could just as well have described Hefner and the life he chose to lead. One that was filled with every pleasure the world can provide, particularly, loads and loads of women. Hefner spent the better portion of his early life building Playboy Magazine, a magazine that would go on to become the premier, “Gentleman’s Magazine” in the world. Featuring pornographic images of young, beautiful women alongside far less erotic editorials and articles covering everything from sports to politics. Hefner flat out stated in his later years that he wished to be remembered as a man who made an impact on sexual values.
In this, he certainly succeeded and not for the better. While Playboy was and is comparably tame next to some of the other magazines and pornographic content one can find on the internet today, it played a vital role in the mainstreaming of pornography and more casual sexual mores in American society. If your coworker is more comfortable talking about their sex life than their salary (and they are) then you have Hugh Hefner to thank. But if you’re also noticing a rising rate of depression amongst young women, increased confusion amongst young people about love and relationships, a declining marriage rate, and a rapidly growing pornography addiction epidemic with real world health consequences, then you also have Hefner to thank.
A major factor in Hefner’s and Playboy’s success was the way in which it marketed itself as a, “Gentleman’s Magazine.” Something read by not just refined men but by mature men. This impact has been felt throughout the world of so-called, “Adult Entertainment” and yet the science tells us that pornography such as that marketed by Hefner, actually has the impact of turning grown men into little more than children. Addiction works by affecting the brain’s reward centers and when we constantly choose to give into our desires in order to get that shot of dopamine running through our minds, we gradually weaken those portions of the frontal lobe responsible for willpower and self control. That is, when a man feels the desire to view pornography or crack open a playboy magazine, if he’s become addicted to it, then his willpower is going to gradually get weaker and weaker over time. Until, like a child, he has no impulse control whatsoever left.
In stark contrast with Solomon who, for all his many flaws, was incredibly wise; Hefner was deeply confused. Making such comments such as, “The major civilizing force in the world is not religion, it is sex.”
Notwithstanding the fact that it was religion which got man to advance beyond his primitive status as a hunter-gatherer, who sometimes might use force to get the sexual mates they’d prefer (quite civilized huh Hugh?) it seemed that for Hefner sex had become life itself. Indeed, it had become his own private religion in a way. Perhaps as a way to fill a gaping void he felt in his own life.
King Solomon eventually grew to hate his life, in spite of his material success and, as many these days tend to do, turned to an addiction in order that he might escape from the gaping emptiness that had grown within his heart. In Solomon’s case, this turned out to be sex. “But King Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites;” (1 Kings 11:1)
Sounds a bit familiar huh? Almost like an eccentric old man who lives in a vast estate, wearing nothing but silk dressing gowns and constantly cavorting around with numerous scantily clad, if not outright nude, women. Perhaps, after his empire had been firmly established in the pop culture of America, old Hugh found that his vast wealth was not bringing him the happiness he imagined. It would certainly explain why he spent the final decades of his life focused entirely on surrounding himself with beautiful women and presumably bedding many of them. But, as Solomon so wisely observed in his own life, this was all but vanity. Just as a drug addict may discover that they can never have enough anymore to truly feel happy, old Hugh perhaps felt that he couldn’t get quite enough sex to be happy.
In the end, Hugh Hefner leaves a legacy just as we all do. Unfortunately, his appears to be that of accelerating the decline of the traditional family in America and the rise of sexual libertinism which has destroyed so many lives. In the end, Hugh Hefner will be, I think, remembered above all else as a man of great talent and vision who squandered his life away in the pursuit of empty vanities and who wrought great destruction on the culture of his day as he did so.
On June 6, 2016, I wrote a letter to Hugh Hefner that included these words:
In the article MAKE LOVE NOT WAR you asserted, “I had been promoting the basic premises that became the sexual revolution from the very beginning and from early 1960 with the Playboy philosophy…”
Hugh you are an universal man in a way since you have succeeded in business and are recognized throughout the world as a leader in the sexual revolution. However, have you found a lasting meaning?
Below are the comments of Francis Schaeffer on Solomon and the Book of Ecclesiastes:
Leonardo da Vinci and Solomon both were universal men searching for the meaning in life. Solomon was searching for a meaning in the midst of the details of life.His struggle was to find the meaning of life. Not just plans in life.Anybody can find plans in life. A child can fill up his time with plans of building tomorrow’s sand castle when today’s has been washed away. There is a difference between finding plans in life and purpose in life. Humanism since the Renaissance and onward has never found it and it has never found it. Modern man has not found it and it has always got worse and darker in a very real way.
We have here the declaration of Solomon’s universality:
1 Kings 4:30-34
English Standard Version (ESV)
30 so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt.31 For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol, and his fame was in all the surrounding nations.32 He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005.33 He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. He spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish.34 And people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom.
_________________________
Here is the universal man and his genius. Solomon is the universal man with a empire at his disposal. Solomon had it all.
Ecclesiastes 1:3
English Standard Version (ESV)
3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes.
__________
The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”
Hugh you have your sexual exploits just like Solomon did, but also you have thrown your efforts into your business too. Sadly Solomon also found the pursuit of great works in his labor just as empty. In Ecclesiastes 2:11 he asserted, “THEN I CONSIDERED ALL THAT MY HANDS HAD DONE AND THE TOLL I HAD EXPENDED IN DOING IT, AND BEHOLD, ALL WAS VANITY AND A STRIVING AFTER WIND, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
Hugh you have been under the impression that all of your efforts have been an effort to pioneer something new. But Solomon noted in Ecclesiastes 1:9, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”
Hugh you remind me of Solomon because you are looking for lasting meaning in your life and you are looking in the same 6 areas that King Solomon did in what I call the 6 big L words. He looked into learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies,luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20)…..HUGH do you agree with fellow universal man Solomon that UNDER THE SUN there is no advantage for man when he toils for the wind? Naked we all came into the world and naked we will leave.
Thank you again for your time and I know how busy you are.
Hugh Hefner is joined by former girlfriends Barbi Benton (L), and Holly Madison, during a party at the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills, California in 2005.
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Hugh Hefner with a Playmate wearing skin-art of the 2002 Grammy Awards.
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Hefner’s 79th birthday along with his girlfriends, Playboy Playmates (L-R) Kendra Wilkinson, Bridget Marquardt, and Holly Madison.
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With wife Crystal Harris at Hefner’s annual Halloween Party at The Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 2012.
FRED PROUSER/REUTERS
Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner and girlfriends Anna Sophia Berglund, left, and Shera Bechard arrive at the Society of Singers annual dinner in Beverly Hills.
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Hugh Hefner in 2002.
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Hugh Hefner poses with his bride Crystal Harris.
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Hugh Hefner in his famous hat.
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Hugh Hefner and his Playboy bunnies.
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The late Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner poses for a photograph in this September, 2003 photo.
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Hugh Hefner , Playboy magazine founder, and Playboy Playmates and girlfriends arrive at the American Film Institute’s ‘AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Sir Sean Connery’ taping in June. 2006.
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Hugh Hefner and his fiancee, Playboy Playmate Crystal Harris, at the opening night gala of the 2011 TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood.
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Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner kisses girlfriend Kendra Wilkinson after their arrival for his 80th birthday party in a Munich club on May 31, 2006.
Wolfgang Laib was born in 1950 in Metzingen, Germany. Inspired by the teachings of the ancient Taoist philosopher Laozi, by the modern artist Brancusi, and the legacy of formative life experiences with his family in Germany and India, Laib creates sculptures that seem to connect that past and present, the ephemeral and the eternal. Working with perishable organic materials (pollen, milk, wood, and rice) as well as durable ones that include granite, marble, and brass, he grounds his work by his choice of forms—squares, ziggurats, and ships, among others.
His painstaking collection of pollen from the wildflowers and bushes that grow in the fields near his home is integral to the process of creating work in which pollen is his medium. This he has done each year over the course of three decades. Laib’s attention to human scale, duration of time, and his choice of materials give his work the power to transport us to expected realms of memory, sensory pleasure, and contemplation.
Wolfgang Laib studied medicine at the University of Tübingen (1974). Major exhibitions of his work have appeared at the Phillips Collection (2013); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2010); Museo Nacional de Arte, La Paz (2010); Fondazione Merz (2009); Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2009); Nelson-Atkins Museum (2009); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (2007); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2005); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2005); Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2005); Guangdong Museum of Art (2004); National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2003); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul (2003); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2002); Henry Art Gallery (2001); Dallas Museum of Art (2001); Hirshhorn Museum (2000); Kunsthaus Bregenz (1999); , and the Venice Biennale (1999, 1997, 1982), among many others. Wolfgang Laib lives and works in Hochdorf, Germany and Tamil Nadu, India.
Ecclesiastes 2-3 Published on Sep 19, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider _____________________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular […]
Is Love All You Need? Jesus v. Lennon Posted on January 19, 2011 by Jovan Payes 0 On June 25, 1967, the Beatles participated in the first worldwide TV special called “Our World”. During this special, the Beatles introduced “All You Need is Love”; one of their most famous and recognizable songs. In it, John Lennon […]
___________________ Something happened to the Beatles in their journey through the 1960’s and although they started off wanting only to hold their girlfriend’s hand it later evolved into wanting to smash all previous sexual standards. The Beatles: Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? _______ Beatle Ringo Starr, and his girlfriend, later his wife, […]
__________ Marvin Minsky __ I was sorry recently to learn of the passing of one of the great scholars of our generation. I have written about Marvin Minsky several times before in this series and today I again look at a letter I wrote to him in the last couple of years. It is my […]
Why was Tony Curtis on the cover of SGT PEPPERS? I have no idea but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that probably it was because he was in the smash hit SOME LIKE IT HOT. Above from the movie SOME LIKE IT HOT __ __ Jojo was a man who […]
__ Francis Schaeffer did not shy away from appreciating the Beatles. In fact, SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND album was his favorite and he listened to it over and over. I am a big fan of Francis Schaeffer but there are detractors that attack him because he did not have all the degrees that they […]
On 11-15-05 Adrian Rogers passed over to glory and since it is the 10th anniversary of that day I wanted to celebrate his life in two ways. First, I wanted to pass on some of the material from Adrian Rogers’ sermons I have sent to prominent atheists over the last 20 years. Second, I wanted […]
Looking back on his life as a Beatle Paul said at a certain age you start to think “Wow, I have to get serious. I can’t just be a playboy all of my life.” It is true that the Beatles wrote a lot about girls!!!!!! The Beatles – I Want To Hold your Hand [HD] Although […]
I was saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen. Today I will be looking back at some of my interaction with him and I will continue this in a few more posts in future weeks. At the end of this post is the email I sent him right after he talked with me on the phone.
and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto
I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:
Nicolaas Bloembergen, the Dutch–American physicist who shared the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics, has died at the age of 97. Bloembergen died on 5 September following complications arising from a heart attack.
Born in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, on 11 March 1920, Bloembergen studied physics at the University of Utrecht. He graduated in 1943 with a Phil. Drs degree – equivalent to an MSc – just before the occupying German forces closed the university during the Second World War.
Although he was not Jewish, Bloembergen spent two years in hiding from the Nazis. He later told the Nobel Foundation that during this time he ate tulip bulbs to fill his stomach and read the Dutch physicist Hendrik Kramers’s book Quantum Theorie des Elektrons und der Strahlung by the light of a storm lamp that needed cleaning every 20 minutes.
In 1945 Bloembergen moved to Harvard University. Two years later he returned to the Netherlands to the University of Leiden, where he was awarded a PhD in physics in 1948 for his work on nuclear magnetic resonance. In 1949 he went back to Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his career.
In the 1960s Bloembergen began to develop the theory of nonlinear optics in which photons interact with each other through some mediating material, such as transparent crystal. A common nonlinear optical phenomenon is “four-wave mixing” where three waves are sent into a nonlinear medium and the exchange of energy and momentum between the waves results in the production of a fourth wave. This method made it possible to generate laser light in both the infrared and the ultraviolet, extending the range of wavelengths that could be used for laser spectroscopy.
Bloembergen shared half of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics with Stanford University physicist Arthur Schawlow “for the development of laser spectroscopy”. The other half went to Kai Siegbahn from Uppsala University in Sweden for his work on high-resolution electron spectroscopy. In 1991 he served as president of the American Physical Society.
Died at 97 Dutch American physicist Nicolaas Bloembergen
Published on Sep 8, 2017
Nicolaas “Nico” Bloembergen was born on March 11, 1920 and died on September 5, 2017. He was a Dutch-American physicist and Nobel laureate, recognized for his work in developing driving principles behind nonlinear optics for laser spectroscopy.During his career, he was a professor at both Harvard University and later at the University of Arizona.
__
This was emailed on July 3, 2016
July 3, 2016
Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen, c/o College of Optical Sciences
The University of Arizona
1630 E. University Blvd.
P.O. Box 210094
Tucson, AZ 85721-0094
Dear Dr. Bloembergen,
It was such a privilege to get a telephone call from you on July 1, 2016 because I know your time is very valuable. Since you said writing letters and mailing them was difficult for you I have chosen to email you this time around.
I told you on the phone that the last time we corresponded was way back on September 6, 1995 and at that time you responded in a letter to me with these words, “Less zealotry and more compassion for those who have different concepts of the world from yours would help make this world more livable.” On the phone you commented, “Yes the religious people are fighting among themselves often.” At that point I kidded you that it is the Muslims and not the Christians who seem to be on the warpath these days and you responded, “I think the Muslims get too much blame. Today’s political situation is all [messed up.]”
Let me agree with you that the majority of Muslims in the USA are lovers of freedom. Here in Arkansas we have family friends who are Muslims and they were personally troubled by the recent attacks by Muslims on unarmed civilians.
That brings me to another point. Christianity is different than every other religion for two reasons according to Francis Schaeffer:
In every other religion we have to do something–everything from burning a joss stick to sacrificing our firstborn child to dropping a coin the collection plate–the whole spectrum. But with Christianity we do not do anything; God has done it all: He has created us and He has sent His Son; His Son died and because the Son is infinite, therefore He bears out total guilt. We do not need to bear our guilt, nor do we even have to merit the merit of Christ. He does it all. So in one way it is the easiest religion in the world….
In the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, and especially in the extensive notes of fifth chapter [shows] the way the Bible measures up to history. Once we say that, this is very exciting. It is very exciting because other religions are not founded in history, they are “out there” somewhere, or you can think of them as inside your own head–whichever way you are looking at it. On the other hand, the Bible claims to rooted in history.
Taking a look at the holy books of Islam and Mormonism and you find many historical inaccuracies. For instance, the Book of Mormon was wrong about horses, cows, steel, honey bees and barley existing in North America 2000 years ago. Furthermore, in 2012 during the Presidential Race Harry Kroto also asked why no one seemed to ask Mitt Romney if he actually believed that Christ visited North America 2000 years ago as the Book of Mormon claimed.
Blaise Pascal asserted, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” In other words, the spiritual answers your heart is seeking can be found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.
Let me close by talking to you about the ROMAN ROAD TO CHRIST.
Rom. 3:10, “As it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one . . . “
Rom. 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Rom. 5:12, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”
Rom. 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Rom. 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Rom. 10:9-10, “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”
Rom. 10:13, “For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Thanks for your time. Again it was such an honor to get to talk to you. I hope you enjoy the CD’s on Michael Polanyi. He was a very wise man and his son John is a very outstanding man too.
The John Lennon and the Beatles really were on a long search for meaning and fulfillment in their lives just like King Solomon did in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon looked into learning (1:12-18, 2:12-17), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-2, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). He fount that without God in the picture all […]
______________ George Harrison Swears & Insults Paul and Yoko Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- The Beatles The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking […]
The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA Uploaded on Nov 29, 2010 The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA. The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis […]
__________________ Beatles 1966 Last interview I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. In this […]
_______________ The Beatles documentary || A Long and Winding Road || Episode 5 (This video discusses Stg. Pepper’s creation I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about […]
_______________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: _____________________ I have included the 27 minute episode THE AGE OF NONREASON by Francis Schaeffer. In that video Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.” How Should […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 ___________________________________ Today I will answer the simple question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE AN OPTIMISTIC SECULAR HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GOD OR AN AFTERLIFE? This question has been around for a long time and you can go back to the 19th century and read this same […]
____________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: __________ Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”, episode 8 […]
Love and Death [Woody Allen] – What if there is no God? [PL] ___________ _______________ How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer 10 Worldview and Truth Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100 Francis Schaeffer […]
___________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ____________________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer […]
Paracosm is the second studio album by American singer Washed Out, released on August 7, 2013 by Sub Pop. It was produced by Washed Out and Ben H. Allen and was recorded at Maze Studios in Atlanta.
“It All Feels Right” was released as the album’s lead single on June 11, 2013.[13] Upon release, the album received mostly positive reviews from critics.[14] The album debuted at number 21 on the Billboard 200, selling 13,000 copies in its first week.[15]
________ Elvis Presley – Scene from “Viva Las Vegas” (MGM 1964) Elvis & Ann Margret Elvis Presley, Ann Margret – The Lady Loves Me – Viva Las Vegas Come On Everybody – Elvis and Ann-Margret HD. Hollywood Legend Ann-Margret on Faith, Love and Recovery Julie Blim – 700 Club Producer Scott Ross Ann-Margret interview on […]
__ Barry McGuire – Eve Of Destruction Barry McGuire Eve of Destruction [1965] Eve of Destruction (song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010)(Learn how and when to remove this […]
Barry McGuire – Eve Of Destruction Machine Gun by Jimi Hendrix Marvin Gaye ” What’s Going On ” Live 1972 Bob Dylan – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door “Blowin’ in the Wind” – Bob Dylan | Vietnam War Montage Edwin Starr – War (Original Video – 1969) Uploaded on Dec 6, 2007 Original […]
__ Faces “Stay With Me” The Faces – Had Me A Real Good Time Stay with Me (Faces song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “Stay with Me” Single by Faces from the album A Nod Is As Good As a Wink… to a Blind Horse B-side “You’re So Rude” (US) “Debris” (Intl.) Released December 1971 […]
__ It is Enough – The Waiting Published on Feb 26, 2014 John 3:16-17 King James Version (KJV) 16,For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17,For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn […]
__ Religious Songs That Secular People Can Love: Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Sam Cooke, Johnny Cash & Your Favorites in Music, Religion| December 15th, 2015 7 Comments There are good reasons to find the onslaught of religious music this time of year objectionable. And yet—though I want to do my part in the War on […]
_________________ The Beatles – Free As A Bird Published on Apr 5, 2016 The Beatles Now Streaming. Listen to the Come Together Playlist here: http://smarturl.it/BeatlesCT Download Anthology: http://smarturl.it/AnthologyBeatlesBuy Anthology: http://smarturl.it/AnthologyPhys The Beatles Anthology project was a huge undertaking and to complement the historical and archival material that was made available both on CD and […]
– ______ The Beatles – Real Love _______ Real Love (Beatles song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “Real Love” Song by John Lennon from the album Imagine: John Lennon Released 10 October 1988 Recorded New York City Length 2:48 Label Parlophone EMI Writer(s) John Lennon Producer(s) George Martin John Lennon Yoko Ono Phil Spector Jack […]
__ George Harrison – “Dehra Dun” Uploaded on Mar 21, 2011 George Harrison “Dehra Dun” Dehra dehra dun, dehra dun dun Dehra dehra dun, dehra dun dun Dehra dehra dun, dehra dun dun Dehra dehra dun… Many roads can take you there, many different ways One direction takes you years, another takes you days […]
__ George Harrison – Isn’t It A Pity [Remastered] Isn’t It a Pity From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For the song by George Gershwin, see Isn’t It a Pity? “Isn’t It a Pity” Single by George Harrison from the album All Things Must Pass A-side “My Sweet Lord” (double A-side) Released 23 November 1970 Format 7-inch […]
I started this serieson my letters andpostcards toHugh Hefner backin September when I read of thepassing of Mr. Hefner. There are manymore to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite cities!!!!
Postcards from New Orleans Feb 6, 2017
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Feb 6, 2017 postcard from New Orleans letter Part A
Today is Feb 6 so I want to quote from Proverbs 6. Good advice today from anyone in New Orleans like me.
20-23 Good friend, follow your father’s good advice; don’t wander off from your mother’s teachings. Wrap yourself in them from head to foot; wear them like a scarf around your neck. Wherever you walk, they’ll guide you; whenever you rest, they’ll guard you; when you wake up, they’ll tell you what’s next. For sound advice is a beacon, good teaching is a light, moral discipline is a life path.
—–
Notice especially verse 20 “Good friend, follow your father’s good advice;don’t wander off from your mother’s teachings.”
HUGH, this is good advice for you since your mother GRACE wanted you to be a Christian missionary!!! I hope you realize that you can still go down that road!!!
I wrote to Hefner in an earlier letter these words:
Francis Schaeffer observed concerning Solomon, “You can not know woman by knowing 1000 women.”
__________
Exalting Jesus in Ecclesiastes Daniel Akin, Jonathan Akin and Tony Merida:
Finally, Solomon indulged in sexual pleasure. In addition to 700 wives (1 Kgs 11), he had 300 concubines (cf. Eccl 2:8). A concubine was a woman given to a man simply for the purpose of sexual pleasure. Concubines were objects. Thus, Solomon could out-locker-room-boast basketball all-star Wilt Chamberlain (who once infamously claimed to have been with 20,000 women!) and infamous playboy Hugh Hefner. So many people are on an endless search for sexual pleasure. They may not have a thousand women literally, but they have that many or more in their pornographic internet history or their romance novels. They constantly look for a new illicit experience in order to be satisfied, but like Solomon they come away empty and disappointed—the high only lasts so long.
The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion of The Christian Post or its editors.
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Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. He is the author of 25 books and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire.
Hugh Hefner has died at the age of 91. I hope he found grace and repentance before leaving this world. I also hope that his death will signify the end of the sexual revolution. It has failed miserably on every front. May it never rise again.
The sexual revolution promised freedom but produced bondage. It promised excitement but produced emptiness. It promised thrills and produced STD’s. It was destined to crash and burn from the very first day.
It’s a terrible shame it took so long.
Although Alfred Kinsey’s perverted sex studies, first released in 1948, helped pave the way for the sexual revolution, the real seeds were planted with Playboy’s nude photoshoot of Marilyn Monroe in 1953. Then, those seeds grew with explosive force in the counterculture revolution of the 1960s. And the rest, as they say, is history – a very sad history, for sure.
Today, 8-year-olds are getting exposed to hardcore pornography.
Twelve-year-olds are sexting each other, sometimes committing suicide when their naked pictures circulate through their school.
Condoms have been made available to first graders. (What, pray tell, does a 6-year-old child do with a condom?)
Healthy young men cannot perform without Viagra because of their porn addictions.
Half of all babies born to first time mothers are now conceived out of wedlock.
Thanks for nothing, sexual revolution. You have brought nothing but destruction.
Last year, for a short period of time, Playboy announced that it would no longer carry nude pictures in its magazine or on its website.
But Playboy did not temporarily abandon nude pictorials because society had become more moral. It was abandoning these pictorials because society had become so immoral that Playboy’s relatively mild pornography was no longer a draw.
Pornography of the most sordid kind was freely available everywhere, so who needed pictures of nude women in Playboy? Porn was now ubiquitous.
And what does this porn glut produce? Broken marriages. Sexual addictions. Perverse fleshly appetites. Deadly STD’s. The degrading of women. Lots of bad and lots of evil. Absolutely nothing good.
Consider these stats from a government website: “Adolescents ages 15-24 account for nearly half of the 20 million new cases of STD’s each year. Today, two in five sexually active teen girls have had an STD that can cause infertility and even death. Also, though rates of HIV are very low among adolescents, males make up more than 80 percent of HIV diagnoses among 13- to 19-year-olds.”
This is the reality of the sexual revolution, not that naked woman inviting you into her chat room to satisfy your fantasies.
Sir, that smiling beauty calling to you from your laptop makes you feel wanted. She has what you need. Let your dreams come true!
But here’s what those flirtations will get you. An increased desire for more of the same, followed by an increased desire for something more intense, followed by an embarrassing addiction to hard-core perversion. And it started with that beautiful smile!
Young lady, when that photographer told you were beautiful, he did it for one reason only. Money. And that fleeting high you got the first time men paid to look at you was tinged with embarrassment, then hardness, then drugs to ease the pain.
It’s a trap. It’s a lie. Get out while you can!
Although I didn’t see the episode myself, I was told that many years ago, Hugh Hefner appeared on the Mike Douglas show.
At one point during the interview (and I paraphrase), Douglas said to Hefner, “Hey, you’re daughter has become a beautiful young woman. I guess it’s time for her to pose nude?”
Hefner’s response said it all. “Of course not! My daughter won’t be posing nude.”
And there, in a nutshell, is the bankruptcy of the sexual revolution: It destroys our sons and daughters.
But all hope is not lost. The sexual revolution can be reversed. There is a better way. A much better way. God’s way.
I’ve read a number of studies that all say the same thing: Singles who engage in one-night stands and have multiple sexual partners are the least satisfied sexually. Committed, married couples are the most satisfied sexually.
That’s because we are not just physical animals, fulfilling a bodily function. We are human beings with emotions and values and desires, and sexual intimacy divorced from relational fidelity produces frustration and shame and guilt in the end.
That’s why, in more than 41 years of marriage, it has never dawned on me once to envy the likes of Hugh Hefner, a man who slept with more gorgeous women in a week than most of us have met in a lifetime.
What a pitiful, lost soul, and what a tragic, ugly legacy.
And this brings me back to where we started. I hope he found grace and repentance before leaving this world. I also hope that his death will signify the end of the sexual revolution.
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has died at the age of 91.
26th September 1972: Hef, Barbi and the girls disembark the Big Bunny.Long before the Internet made nudity ubiquitous, Hefner faced obscenity charges in 1963 for publishing and circulating photos of disrobed celebrities and aspiring stars but he was acquitted.(Image: Daily Mirror)14 of 34
20th February 1971: Hef and Barbi on his private jet.Hefner settled down somewhat in 2012 at age 86 when he took Crystal Harris, who was 60 years younger, as his third wife.(Image: Sunday Mirror)15 of 34
26th September 1972: Bunnies in London.Hef said that thanks to the impotency-fighting drug Viagra he continued exercising his libido into his 80s(Image: Daily Mirror)16 of 34
8th August 1971: The Playboy boss pictured at Heathrow Airport before his flight to Saint-Tropez.Hefner created Playboy as the first stylish glossy men’s magazine and in addition to nude fold-outs, it had intellectual appeal with top writers such as Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin and Alex Haley for men who liked to say they did not buy the magazine just for the pictures.(Image: Daily Mirror)17 of 34
4th August 1971: Hef and the Big Bunny land in London.”I’ve never thought of Playboy quite frankly as a sex magazine,” Hefner told CNN in 2002. “I always thought of it as a lifestyle magazine in which sex was one important ingredient.”(Image: Daily Mirror)18 of 34
27th September 1972: Hef addresses the press during at the Hilton Hotel.After writing copy for Esquire magazine, Hefner married and worked in the circulation department of Children’s Activities magazine when he began plotting what would become Playboy magazine.(Image: Daily Mirror)19 of 34
(Image: Daily Mirror)20 of 34
25th June 1966: Hef in London.The first issue came out in December 1953 – featuring nude photos of actress Marilyn Monroe – and was a hit.As the magazine took off, it was attacked from the right because of the nudity and from the left by feminists who said it reduced women to sex objects.(Image: Sunday Mirror)21 of 34
3rd September 1969: The jet set couple at Gatwick.Hefner once declared sex to be “the primary motivating factor in the course of human history” and, using that as a business model Playboy flourished during the sexual revolution and into the 1970s with monthly circulation hitting 7 million.(Image: Daily Herald)22 of 34
29th July 1970: Barbi Benton plants a kiss on her man’s cheek.Hef’s girlfriends grew used to sharing him with other women.(Image: Daily Mirror)23 of 34
25th June 1966:Hef ran into trouble in the 1980s with competition from Penthouse and Hustler – magazines that had much more explicit photos – and Playboy’s social impact faded considerably by the 21st century.The Playboy Clubs closed in 1991 but would be partially revived.(Image: Sunday Mirror)24 of 34
6th May 1982: Hugh Hefner and his daughter Christie, who is the new president of the Playboy Empire.After suffering a minor stroke in 1985, Hefner made daughter Christie chief executive officer of Playboy Enterprises and she gave the business a makeover before stepping down in 2009.Hefner’s son, Cooper, who was nearly 40 years younger than Christie, assumed a major role in the company in 2014.(Image: Daily Mirror)25 of 34
29th July 1970:In-depth interviews with historic figures such as Fidel Castro, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and John Lennon also were featured regularly in Playboy.(Image: Daily Mirror)26 of 34
5th September 1969: Pictured as they arrive at the Playboy Club, Hugh Hefner with his girlfriend Barbara Benton, walking along Park Lane.(Image: Daily Mirror)27 of 34
5th September 1969: Hef was in London to hold a press conference at the London Playboy Club to announce the formation of the Playboy film production company.(Image: Daily Mirror)28 of 34
3rd September 1969: Hef and Barbi arrive at Gatwick.(Image: Daily Herald)29 of 34
6th September 1969: Hef and Barbi relax at the airport.Playboy magazine, starting with its March 2016 issue, did away with full frontal nudity in a rebranding that would have been unimaginable in the publication’s heyday.(Image: Daily Herald)30 of 34
27th September 1972: The Playboy king with his social secretary during a press conference at the Hilton Hotel.(Image: Daily Mirror)31 of 34
8th August 1971: Hef chats to playmate Marilyn Cole and Roman Polanski at Heathrow Airport before his flight to Saint-Tropez.(Image: Daily Mirror)32 of 34
Ecclesiastes 2-3 Published on Sep 19, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider _____________________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular […]
Is Love All You Need? Jesus v. Lennon Posted on January 19, 2011 by Jovan Payes 0 On June 25, 1967, the Beatles participated in the first worldwide TV special called “Our World”. During this special, the Beatles introduced “All You Need is Love”; one of their most famous and recognizable songs. In it, John Lennon […]
___________________ Something happened to the Beatles in their journey through the 1960’s and although they started off wanting only to hold their girlfriend’s hand it later evolved into wanting to smash all previous sexual standards. The Beatles: Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? _______ Beatle Ringo Starr, and his girlfriend, later his wife, […]
__________ Marvin Minsky __ I was sorry recently to learn of the passing of one of the great scholars of our generation. I have written about Marvin Minsky several times before in this series and today I again look at a letter I wrote to him in the last couple of years. It is my […]
Why was Tony Curtis on the cover of SGT PEPPERS? I have no idea but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that probably it was because he was in the smash hit SOME LIKE IT HOT. Above from the movie SOME LIKE IT HOT __ __ Jojo was a man who […]
__ Francis Schaeffer did not shy away from appreciating the Beatles. In fact, SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND album was his favorite and he listened to it over and over. I am a big fan of Francis Schaeffer but there are detractors that attack him because he did not have all the degrees that they […]
On 11-15-05 Adrian Rogers passed over to glory and since it is the 10th anniversary of that day I wanted to celebrate his life in two ways. First, I wanted to pass on some of the material from Adrian Rogers’ sermons I have sent to prominent atheists over the last 20 years. Second, I wanted […]
Looking back on his life as a Beatle Paul said at a certain age you start to think “Wow, I have to get serious. I can’t just be a playboy all of my life.” It is true that the Beatles wrote a lot about girls!!!!!! The Beatles – I Want To Hold your Hand [HD] Although […]
FRIEDMAN: In the first course in economics at the University of Chicago in 1932. We took the same course. It was Jacob Viner’s Economic Theory, and, as it happened, Jacob Viner seated his students alphabetically in order to be able to remember their names, and so Rose Director, which was her name, sat next to Milton Friedman. In addition, as Rose always says, she was the only girl in the class at the time.
LAMB: When did you decide to write books together, and how did you separate the responsibility?
FRIEDMAN: Well, that’s very hard to answer. We were married in 1938, six years after we first met, and then we had children. Rose did a wonderful job in really taking care of the house, raising children and being an inspiration to me. But she had a professional career before that. She had written some things and worked in research organizations before that. But it wasn’t until the kids were grown up and off to college that she was able, really, to spend the time working with me. Capitalism and Freedom was based on a series of lectures that I had given at a kind of summer school, and she took those lectures and reworked them into the book, so really she should have been a joint author on that as well.
LAMB: Janet and David?
FRIEDMAN: They’re my children.
LAMB: You dedicate Capitalism and Freedom to them. Where are they?
FRIEDMAN: Janet’s at Davis, Calif. She’s a lawyer, but her husband is a computer specialist who teaches at the Davis Branch of the University of California. My son David is now — well, he’s had a checkered career in the sense that he got a degree in physics, a Ph.D. in physics, but he’s become an economist. He never took a course in economics except over the dinner table.
LAMB: Where is he?
FRIEDMAN: He’s at the University of Chicago in the law school where he does research in law and economics.
LAMB: When did you win the Nobel Prize and for what?
FRIEDMAN: I won the Nobel Prize in 1976, and I won it for none of those things, but for Monetary History of the United States and an earlier book of mine called A Theory of the Consumption Function, which, I may say, are funny things. A Theory of the Consumption Function is, in my mind, the best thing I ever did as a piece of science. Monetary History is undoubtedly the most influential, and Free to Choose is the best selling, so they are not similarly characterized.
LAMB: I’m going to take it even a step lower, if you will. I want you to tell a little bit of the pencil story.
FRIEDMAN: Oh, sure. I’d be delighted to.
LAMB: Your picture on this book has you with a pencil in your hand.
FRIEDMAN: That didn’t originate with me. I got it from Leonard Read, who was the head of the Foundation for Economic Education. It’s used to tell how the market works, and it’s used to tell how people can work together without knowing one another, without being of the same religion or anything. The story starts like this: Leonard Read and I held up a lead pencil — so-called, one of these yellow pencils — and we said, “Nobody knows how to make a pencil. There’s not a single person in the world who knows how to make a pencil.” In order to make a pencil, you have to get wood for the outside. In order to get wood, you have to have logging; you have to have somebody who can manufacture saws. No single person knows how to do all that. What’s called lead inside isn’t lead. It’s graphite. It comes from some mines in Latin America. In order to be able to make a pencil, you’d have to be able to get the lead. The rubber at the tip isn’t really. Nowadays it isn’t even natural rubber, but at the time I was talking, it was natural rubber. It comes from Malaysia, although the rubber tree is not native to Malaysia but was imported into Malaysia by some English botanists. So in order to know how to make a pencil, you would have to be able to do all of these things. There are probably thousands of people who have cooperated together to make that pencil. Somehow or other, the people in South America who dug out the graphite cooperated with the people in Malaysia who tapped the rubber trees, cooperated with maybe the people in Oregon who cut down the trees. These thousands of people don’t know one another. They speak different languages. They come from different religions. They might hate one another if they saw them. What is it that enabled them to cooperate together? The answer is the existence of a market. The answer is the people in Latin America were led to dig out the graphite because somebody was willing to pay them. They didn’t have to know who was paying them; they didn’t have to know what it was going to be used for. All they had to know was somebody was going to pay them. Indeed, going back to Hayek, one of the most important articles he ever wrote — it doesn’t show up in the book — was about the way in which prices are an information mechanism, the role of prices in transmitting information. Let’s suppose there’s a great increase in the demand for graphite. How do people find out about that? Because the people who want more graphite offer a higher price for it. The price of graphite tends to go up. The people in Latin America don’t have to know anything about why the demand went up. Who is it who’s willing to pay the higher price? The price itself transmits the information that graphite is scarcer than it was and more in demand. If you go back to the pencil thing, what brought all these people together was an enormous complex structure of prices — the price of graphite, the price of lumber, the price of rubber, the wages paid to the laborer who did this and so on. It’s a marvelous example of how you can get a complex structure of cooperation and coordination which no individual planned. There was nobody who sat in a central office and sent an order out to Malaysia, “Produce one more thimble of rubber,” or sent a signal. It was the market that coordinated all of this without anybody having to know all of the people involved.
LAMB: How many times have you told that pencil story?
FRIEDMAN: Well, I really haven’t told it that many times. I told it in the TV program and then I told it in the book, but I think this is the third time.
LAMB: You’re living in San Francisco, where we are. What brought you here?
FRIEDMAN: When I reached the age of 65 — I was at that time living in Chicago and teaching in Chicago — I decided I had graded all the exam papers I was going to grade. My wife grew up in Portland, Ore., and she was in love with San Francisco. She tried to move us out here many times during our life together, but she never succeeded until I decided I was going to retire from active teaching. Fortunately, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University offered me the opportunity to be a fellow at Hoover so I could continue my research and writing without doing any teaching.
LAMB: Peter Robinson, who is a “Booknotes” that people will see at another time, said that he got an MBA from Stanford and never once did anybody bring up Adam Smith or Milton Friedman.
FRIEDMAN: I can believe that.
LAMB: Why would that be?
FRIEDMAN: Because you still have, although it’s not the same as it was in 1963 — there’s more tolerance for the kind of ideas I am in favor of. The general academic community is very much socialist in the sense in which Hayek speaks of the socialists. The general academic community, nowadays it’s labeled political correctness. The ideas of Adam Smith, the ideas of Friedrich Hayek, of Milton Friedman are not very congenial to those who believe that the way in which you get things done is by having government come in and do them.
LAMB: You said earlier that you’re an old man. Do you feel like an old man?
FRIEDMAN: Physically at the moment I do, but not intellectually.
LAMB: Why physically?
FRIEDMAN: I recently had an operation on my back, which had some side effects from which I’ve been very slow in recovering.
LAMB: How old are you now?
FRIEDMAN: I’m 82 years old.
LAMB: Other than this operation, do you think differently because you’re an older person?
FRIEDMAN: No, no.
LAMB: Do you have things you want to accomplish?
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. My wife and I are in the process of trying to write our memoirs.
LAMB: What in that process are you finding? Is it hard?
FRIEDMAN: Yes, because when you start digging back into your past, you find that you’ve forgotten so much and there’s so much to dig out.
LAMB: What’s the purpose of the memoir?
FRIEDMAN: Well, that’s hard to answer. The purpose of the memoirs is we have been very fortunate people. In fact, our tentative title for it is Two Lucky People. We’ve been very fortunate in our life. We’ve had a great deal of activity. We’ve spent a long time. We’ve been able to be at the center. For example, we spent years with the New Deal in Washington. I was involved in wartime research during the war. We’ve lived through and been associated with a lot that has gone on, and we believe that people have forgotten that story. We’re not mostly interested in telling about ourselves, but we want to tell about the world in which we grew up and the world which enabled us, both of whom came from families which by any standard of today would have been regarded as below the poverty level, but neither her family nor mine ever thought of themselves as poor. They weren’t poor. They didn’t have a very high level of income, but they weren’t poor. Unfortunately, the world is moving in a way in which that is no longer likely to be the case. We think maybe we have a story to tell that will be of interest to the public people at large.
LAMB: How are you going about it?
FRIEDMAN: By writing it.
LAMB: Separately, together? Do you dictate?
FRIEDMAN: No, no. In a word processor mostly. Sometimes by hand, but mostly in a word processor. But the way we’ve always done it. We each write parts of it, and then we share it and so on. I don’t believe the problem of collaboration is a very difficult one.
LAMB: How far away are you from completing it?
FRIEDMAN: We’re about halfway through.
LAMB: What size will it be when it’s finished?
FRIEDMAN: I don’t know. At the moment, it’s about their big, but how big it’ll be, I don’t know. We’re up into the 1950s.
LAMB: As you look around today and watch the world move, where are the influences in the society today? Do books influence? Newspapers? Television?
FRIEDMAN: I would say the television has a tremendous influence, but I think books also have an influence. It’s not easy to answer that question. That’s a very sophisticated and subtle question, and I don’t have an easy answer to it. I think experience plays an enormous role. The collapse of the Berlin Wall, for example, was undoubtedly the most influential action for the last hundred years because it put finis to an attitude. The general attitude had been that the future was the future of government, that the way in which you got good things done was by having government do it. I believe the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the exposure of what was happening in Russia, the contrast between East Germany and West Germany has been made a lesson; more recently, the experience of East Asia, of Hong Kong, of Singapore. Today people may not behave in accordance with their knowledge, but everybody knows that the way to develop and to improve the lot of people is through private markets, free enterprise and small government. We’re not practicing what we should be preaching. I’ve been saying that the former communist states are trying as hard as they can to go to where we were 50 years ago, whereas we’re trying as hard as we can to go to where they were 10 years ago.
LAMB: Why?
FRIEDMAN: Because of the inertia and the drive for power. It’s very hard to turn things around. The big problem with government, as Hayek points out, is that once you start doing something, you establish vested interests, and it’s extremely difficult to stop and turn that around. Look at our school system. How is it our school system is worse today than it was 50 years ago? Look at the welfare state. We’ve spent trillions of dollars without any success. But unsuccessful experiments in government — I’ve said if an experiment in private enterprise is unsuccessful, people lose money and they have to close it down. If an experiment in government is unsuccessful, it’s always expanded.
LAMB: What is it that government does that you like?
FRIEDMAN: I would like government to enforce law and order. I would like government to provide the rules, effectively, that guide our life, that determine what’s proper and to do very little other than that.
LAMB: What kind of a grade do you give to the American system of government today? How is it working?
FRIEDMAN: As it was in 1928 or as it is in 1994? It’s a great system. The fundamental system is great, but it hasn’t been working in the last 30 years.
LAMB: Why not?
FRIEDMAN: Because we’ve been departing from its fundamental principles. The founders of country believed in individual freedom, believed in leaving people be, letting them be alone to do whatever they wanted to do. But our government has been increasingly departing from those constitutional principles. You know, there’s a provision in the constitution that Congress shall not interfere with interstate commerce. That provision had some meaning at one time, but it has no meaning now at all. Our courts have ruled that anything you can think of is interstate commerce, and so the government exercises extensive control over things that it has no business interfering with.
LAMB: What do you think of the Federal Reserve Board today?
FRIEDMAN: I’ve long been in favor of abolishing it. There’s no institution in the United States that has such a high public standing and such a poor record of performance.
LAMB: What did Arthur Burns think of that?
FRIEDMAN: He didn’t like that very much, but, needless to say, I didn’t hesitate to say it to him. Look, the federal reserve system was established in 1914, started operation in 1914. It presided over a doubling of prices during World War I. It produced a major collapse in 1921. It had a good period from about 1922 to about 28. Then it undertook actions which led to a recession in 1929 and 30, and it converted that recession by its actions into the Great Depression. The major villain in the Great Depression was, in my opinion, unquestionably the federal reserve system. Since that time, it presided over a doubling of prices during World War II. It financed the inflation of the 1970s. On the whole, it has a very poor record. It’s done far more harm than good.
LAMB: What do you say to the people who say and write that it’s just a matter of time until it all comes tumbling down, meaning the tremendous debt we have in this country will catch up with us.
FRIEDMAN: The debt is not the problem. The debt is not the problem. You’ve got to compare a debt with the assets which correspond to it. It need not come tumbling down. Whether it comes tumbling down will depend on what we do. If we continue to expand the role of government, if we let government grow beyond limit, it will come tumbling down. But that isn’t going to happen. The attitudes of the American people have changed, and they’ve become aware of the fact that government is too big, too intrusive, too extensive, and I have a great deal of confidence in the American people that they’re going to see to it that doesn’t happen.
LAMB: But if you were sitting around with experts in a room and they said, “Let’s look at the future,” where are the problems? We listen every day on the radio and read in the newspapers that it’s just a matter of time.
FRIEDMAN: I think that’s wrong. Fundamentally, what’s been happening is that in the period I talked about from 1928 to now, we have been starving the successful part of our society, namely, the free private enterprise system, and we have been feeding the failure. Government controls over 50 percent of the output of the country, but thank God government is not efficient. Most of that is wasted.
LAMB: Another one of our “Booknotes” guests in this series is John Kenneth Galbraith. If you put the two of you in a room together, which one’s the happiest with what’s happened over the last 50 years?
FRIEDMAN: Ken would be much happier than I would be.
LAMB: Why would he be?
FRIEDMAN: Because he’s a socialist.
LAMB: Why do you think he’s happier and why do you think his side’s been more successful?
FRIEDMAN: Because the story they tell is a very simple story, easy to sell. If there’s something bad, it must be an evil person who’s done it. If you want something done, you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to have government step in and do it. The story Hayek and I want to tell is a much more sophisticated and complicated story, that somehow or other there exists this subtle system in which, without any individual trying to control it, there is a system under which people in seeking to promote their own interests will also promote the well-being of the country — Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Now, that’s a very sophisticated story. It’s hard to understand how you can get a complex interrelated system without anybody controlling it. Moreover, the benefits from government tend to be concentrated; the costs tend to be disbursed. To each farmer, the subsidy he gets from the government means a great deal. To each of a much larger number of consumers, it costs very little. Consequently, those who feed at the trough of government tend to be politically much more powerful than those who provide it with the wherewithal.
LAMB: During your lifetime, who are the leaders you think have been the most loyal to their beliefs and have done the best job?
FRIEDMAN: I would certainly put Ronald Reagan high on that list.
LAMB: What do you say to David Frum’s thesis? Have you read Dead Right?
FRIEDMAN: Yes. He’s quite right. I agree with it.
LAMB: That conservatives basically buy off now . . .
FRIEDMAN: I’m not a conservative. I never have been a conservative. Hayek was not a conservative. The book that follows this one in Hayek’s list was The Constitution of Liberty, a great book, and he has an appendix to it entitled “Why I Am not a Conservative.” We are radicals. We want to get to the root of things. We are liberals in the true meaning of that term — of and concerned with freedom. We are not liberals in the current distorted sense of the term — people who are liberal with other people’s money.
LAMB: You write about Thomas Jefferson. What was he?
FRIEDMAN: I would certainly put him very high on the list. He was a great man. There’s no question about that, and he was certainly a believer in freedom. He was not a conservative.
LAMB: Would he have been a liberal?
FRIEDMAN: Yes, in my sense, not in the corrupted sense of today.
LAMB: But what’s confusing as you watch today’s people who embrace him, you have the Jefferson-Jackson dinners every year for the Democratic Party, and Lincoln is embraced by both sides. What was he?
FRIEDMAN: He’s much more difficult to characterize because his role in our history had to do with the Civil War, and that’s not something to be characterized in terms of socialist or liberal or conservative.
LAMB: Is Thomas Jefferson a Democrat as we know the Democratic Party today?
FRIEDMAN: No, he would not.
LAMB: What would he be today?
FRIEDMAN: He would be a libertarian.
LAMB: A member of the Libertarian Party?
FRIEDMAN: Not necessarily. See, I’m a libertarian in philosophy, but, as I say, I’m a libertarian with a small “l” and a Republican with a capital “r.”
LAMB: You supported and were close to Barry Goldwater.
FRIEDMAN: Yes, I was.
LAMB: What was he?
FRIEDMAN: A libertarian in philosophy, not in party.
LAMB: What is Bill Clinton?
FRIEDMAN: Oh, he’s a socialist.
LAMB: Defined as being what?
FRIEDMAN: As somebody who believes that the way to achieve good things is to have government do it. You can’t think of a more socialist program than the health care program that he tried to get us to adopt.
LAMB: You said earlier in the discussion when we were talking about Rutgers that the worst way to go is to take care of the bottom up. Explain that.
FRIEDMAN: Not to take care of them in the sense of giving them a minimum income, but to believe that the progress of society is going to come from the bottom.
LAMB: So how do you take care of someone who is in the lower third?
FRIEDMAN: In my book Capitalism and Freedom I propose something called a negative income tax, of getting rid of all of the welfare programs we now have, but replace them by essentially a minimum income.
LAMB: But you also say that’s not going to happen very quickly.
FRIEDMAN: Well, we’re moving toward that. The earned income credit is in that line.
LAMB: What will that do?
FRIEDMAN: What we’re not going to move toward, the place we’re wrong is with all of the special welfare programs we have — food stamps, aid to families with dependent children. There are probably a hundred such programs, and what I’ve argued is that we ought to replace that whole ragbag of programs with a single negative income tax.
LAMB: In your lifetime, have you ever had a theory that proved to be wrong? Do you ever go back and say, “I was wrong”?
FRIEDMAN: Oh, yes, sure.
LAMB: What was it?
FRIEDMAN: During World War II when I was at the Treasury, I was essentially a Keynesian, as I believed that the way to control inflation was by controlling government spending. I paid very little attention to money. Only after World War II when I started to work in the field of money did I come to a different conclusion. Now, I believe Keynes was a great man. He was a great economist, but I think his theory is wrong.
LAMB: And his theory, basically stated, is?
FRIEDMAN: Basically stated, the fundamental element of it, is that what matters is spending and what matters in particular is government spending and that government must play a major role in guiding the society. He was a liberal in the 19th century sense, but he was also an elitist, and he believed that there was a group of able public-spirited intellectuals who should be given charge of society.
LAMB: When people look at Milton Friedman 25 years from now — you’ll probably still be here . . .
FRIEDMAN: I won’t be here.
LAMB: What do you want them to remember? Do you want them to remember you as a writer, as a teacher, as a philosopher, as an economist?
FRIEDMAN: Again, I want them to remember me as an economist.
LAMB: And what principle do you want them to remember the most?
FRIEDMAN: That’s hard to say because there are quite a number. I mentioned The Theory of the Consumption Function, which is a very technical book but which yet, I believe, has had a good deal of influence within the discipline of economics. But I really don’t know how to answer that question. I think that people 25 years from now will have to answer it, not me.
LAMB: Milton Friedman has been our guest, and he wrote the introduction of this 50th anniversary edition of F. A. Hayek’s book The Road to Serfdom, and he has a few books of his own. We thank you very much for joining us.
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 5-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over […]
Open letter to President Obama (Part 578) (Emailed to White House on 6-10-13.) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 4-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 3-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, […]
Friedman on Reagan Uploaded by YAFTV on Aug 19, 2009 Nobel Laureate Dr. Milton Friedman discusses the principles of Ronald Reagan during this talk for students at Young America’s Foundation’s 25th annual National Conservative Student Conference _______________ Passing the Balanced Budget Amendment would be what the founding fathers would have wanted. Look at what my […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created […]
Bob Chitester Discusses Milton Friedman and ‘Free to Choose’ Published on Jul 30, 2012 by LibertarianismDotOrg “There are very few people over the generations who have ideas that are sufficiently original to materially alter the direction of civilization. Milton is one of those very few people.” That is how former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan […]
published Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 Chattanooga Times Free Press Milton Friedman at 100 Milton Friedman Photo by Associated Press /Chattanooga Times Free Press. enlarge photo One hundred years ago today, the most powerful defender of economic liberty in American history was born in Brooklyn to poor Jewish immigrants. Though he stood barely five […]
FREE TO CHOOSE “Who protects the worker?” Video and Transcript Part 3 of 7 In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and […]
I started this serieson my letters andpostcards toHugh Hefner backin September when I read of thepassing of Mr. Hefner. There are manymore to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite cities!!!!
Reading a Proverb for every day of the month has been a practice of mine for a long time. Today is February 5. 2017 and I’m reading Proverbs 5 which is appropriate since I am spending a week in New Orleans this month. Here are verses 3-14:
The lips of a seductive woman are oh so sweet, her soft words are oh so smooth. But it won’t be long before she’s gravel in your mouth, a pain in your gut, a wound in your heart. She’s dancing down the primrose path to Death; she’s headed straight for Hell and taking you with her. She hasn’t a clue about Real Life, about who she is or where she’s going.
7-14 So, my friend, listen closely; don’t treat my words casually. Keep your distance from such a woman; absolutely stay out of her neighborhood. You don’t want to squander your wonderful life, to waste your precious life among the hardhearted. Why should you allow strangers to take advantage of you? Why be exploited by those who care nothing for you? You don’t want to end your life full of regrets, nothing but sin and bones, Saying, “Oh, why didn’t I do what they told me? Why did I reject a disciplined life? Why didn’t I listen to my mentors, or take my teachers seriously? My life is ruined! I haven’t one blessed thing to show for my life!”
These comments below are from Francis Schaeffer’ study on Ecclesiastes and they reminded me of Hugh Hefner who was the closest person to a modern day King Solomon and I was also reminded of a Hefner’s possible bitterness against women that started when he learned of his wife’s sexual betrayal of him in 1949. Below are Schaeffer’s comments followed by an article concerning what Hefner called “the most devastating moment in my life.”
___________
If one would flee to alcohol, then surely one may choose sexual pursuits to flee to. Solomon looks in this area too.
Ecclesiastes 7:25-28
25 I directed my mind to know, to investigate and to seek wisdom and an explanation, and to know the evil of folly and the foolishness of madness.26 And I discovered more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains. One who is pleasing to God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her.
27 “Behold, I have discovered this,” says the Preacher, “adding one thing to another to find an explanation,28 I have looked for other answers but have found none. I found one man in a thousand that I could respect, but not one woman. (Good News Translation on verse 28)
One can understand both Solomon’s expertness in this field and his bitterness.
I Kings 11:1-3 (New American Standard Bible)
11 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women,2 from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, “You shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you, for they will surely turn your heart away after their gods.” Solomon held fast to these in love.3 He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned his heart away.
An expert but also the reason for his bitterness. Certainly there have been many men over the centuries who have daydreamed of Solomon’s wealth in this area [of women], but at the end it was sorry, not only sorry but nothing and less than nothing. The simple fact is that one can not know woman in the real sense by pursuing 1000 women. It is not possible. Woman is not found this way. All that is left in this setting if one were to pursue the meaning of life in this direction is this most bitter word found in Ecclesiastes 7:28, “I have looked for other answers but have found none. I found one man in a thousand that I could respect, but not one woman.” (Good News Translation on verse 28) He was searching in the wrong way. He was searching for the answer to life in the limited circle of that which is beautiful in itself but not an answer finally in sexual life. More than that he finally tried to find it in variety and he didn’t even touch one woman at the end.
A man who became famous for his hedonism, Hugh Hefner claims to have slept with more than 1,000 women with a stable of girlfriends less than a third of his age.
But it turns out that the silk-robed, pipe-smoking Casanova’s Playboy lifestyle may have been sparked by the “devastating” betrayal of his first wife.
Hugh – who died yesterday age 91 – vowed to ‘save himself’ for childhood sweetheart Mildred ‘Millie’ Williams until they got married. But just days before their wedding, Williams revealed that she had slept with someone else.
“I had literally saved myself for my wife, but after we had sex she told me that she’d had an affair. That was the most devastating moment in my life,” Hefner once said.
Despite the revelation, the pair got married in 1949 and went on to have two children – daughter Christie Hefner, born in 1952, and son David, born three years later.
However, the betrayal loomed over their marriage and Williams gave her husband permission to sleep with other women; a decision that would forever skew his views on the institution and sexuality.
After 10 years the marriage came to an end but with the successful launch of Playboy in 1953, Hefner’s lavish and lecherous lifestyle was only just beginning.
The serial ladies’ man who became famed for hosting decadent parties at his luxurious Playboy Mansion, has dated a parade of high-profile women over the years…
The children and I are memorizing Ecclesiastes Chapter 12 this fall. I read it out on Thursday September 28th and it was if it was written for Hugh Hefner or for any person who goes throughout their life without thinking about their creator. The description of death is so interesting in Ecclesiastes 12. Solomon wrote the passage and his life looked to be as perfect as Hugh Hefner’s .
Matt Kennedy:
If you had all the power in the world and all the money in the world what would you do? Solomon did whatever his heart desired. Few of us have the power or the means to do that but Solomon had both.
Anne Kennedy:
But the thing that Solomon regretted was that he wasn’t a peasant in a hut with his one wife. That is what he wished he could have had.
Matt Kennedy:
What is better in life than to work with your hands and enjoy your food and the wife of your youth? That is what he wishes that he had, not the women, not the kingdom, not the riches, not the building projects. Everything he desired he got, but he was empty at the end, it was dust. It is not an inaccurate comparison to compare Hugh Hefner to King Solomon because at least in his pursuit of women Solomon probably outdid him, yet at the end Solomon came to repentance and not so sure about Hugh Hefner.
Anne Kennedy:
Solomon returned to the wisdom of his youth and it seems that Hugh Hefner never had any wisdom. He had nothing to go back to.
Matt Kennedy:
Hefner was raised a Methodist though.
Anne Kennedy:
It seems that his parents did not communicate the substance of their faith to their son except to be ridged.
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has died at the age of 91.
The American icon helped usher in the 1960s sexual revolution with his groundbreaking men’s magazine and built a business empire around his libertine lifestyle.
Hefner, once called the “prophet of pop hedonism”, peacefully passed away at his home, Playboy Enterprises confirmed.
29th July 1970: Hef and girlfriend Barbi Benton arrive at Heathrow Airport in his private jet, the “Big Bunny” during a grand tour of his empire.On board with him were Jet Bunnies dressed in all black wet-look uniforms, and they were met at the airport by British Bunnies.(Image: Daily Mirror)1 of 34
27th September 1972: Playboy king Hugh Hefner pictured during a press conference at the Hilton Hotel.”I’m never going to grow up,” Hefner said in a CNN interview when he was 82.”Staying young is what it is all about for me. Holding on to the boy and long ago I decided that age really didn’t matter and as long as the ladies … feel the same way, that’s fine with me.”(Image: Daily Mirror)2 of 34
8th August 1971: Hef pictured at Heathrow Airport before his flight to Saint-Tropez.There to see him off was playmate Marilyn Cole. Also travelling with Hefner is Roman Polanski (left).(Image: Daily Mirror)3 of 34
26th September 1972: Hef, girlfriend Barbi Benton and Bunny Girls arrive at Heathrow Airport on the “Big Bunny”.Hefner was sometimes characterised as an oversexed Peter Pan as he kept a harem of young blondes that numbered as many as seven at his legendary Playboy Mansion.(Image: Daily Mirror)4 of 34
3rd September 1969: Hugh Hefner arriving at Gatwick Airport with his girlfriend Barbara (Barbi) Benton.(Image: Daily Herald)5 of 34
6th September 1969: Hef and Barbi in their travels again.(Image: Daily Herald)6 of 34
1966: Playboy Bunnies await Hef’s arrival at London Airport.He said his swinging lifestyle might have been a reaction to growing up in a repressed family where affection was rarely exhibited.His so-called stunted childhood led to a multi-million-dollar enterprise that centered on naked women but also espoused Hefner’s “Playboy philosophy” based on romance, style and the casting off of mainstream mores.(Image: Sunday Mirror)7 of 34
20th February 1971: Hef on his Playboy Jet headed for chicago with, left to right, Marilyn Cole, Barbi Benton and, seated, Connie Kreski.Hef held legendary parties in his mansions – first in his native Chicago, then in Los Angeles’ exclusive Holmby Hills neighbourhood – where legions of male celebrities swarmed to mingle with beautiful young women.(Image: Sunday Mirror)8 of 34
(Image: Sunday Mirror)9 of 34
25th June 1966: Hefner arrives at London Airport and is welcomed by fifty Playboy Bunnies.Hefner proved to be a genius at branding. The magazine’s rabbit silhouette became one of the best known logos in the world and the “bunny” waitresses in his Playboy nightclubs were instantly recognisable in their low-cut bathing suit-style uniforms with bow ties, puffy cotton tails and pert rabbit ears.(Image: Sunday Mirror)10 of 34
1966: Playboy Bunnies wait to welcome Hef to London.”What I created came out of my own adolescent dreams of fantasies,” he told CNN. “I was trying to redefine what it meant to be a young, urban unattached male.”(Image: Sunday Mirror)11 of 34
25th June 1966: Hefner and his Bunny harem at London Airport.Hef, as he began calling himself in high school, also was a living logo for Playboy, presiding over his realm in silk pajamas and a smoking jacket while puffing on a pipe.(Image: Sunday Mirror)12 of 34
29th July 1970: Hef had a private DC9-30 jet, the “Big Bunny”.On board with him were Jet Bunnies dressed in all black wet-look uniforms, and they were met at the airport by British Bunnies.(Image: Daily Mirror)13 of 34
Ecclesiastes 2-3 Published on Sep 19, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider _____________________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular […]
Is Love All You Need? Jesus v. Lennon Posted on January 19, 2011 by Jovan Payes 0 On June 25, 1967, the Beatles participated in the first worldwide TV special called “Our World”. During this special, the Beatles introduced “All You Need is Love”; one of their most famous and recognizable songs. In it, John Lennon […]
___________________ Something happened to the Beatles in their journey through the 1960’s and although they started off wanting only to hold their girlfriend’s hand it later evolved into wanting to smash all previous sexual standards. The Beatles: Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? _______ Beatle Ringo Starr, and his girlfriend, later his wife, […]
__________ Marvin Minsky __ I was sorry recently to learn of the passing of one of the great scholars of our generation. I have written about Marvin Minsky several times before in this series and today I again look at a letter I wrote to him in the last couple of years. It is my […]
Why was Tony Curtis on the cover of SGT PEPPERS? I have no idea but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that probably it was because he was in the smash hit SOME LIKE IT HOT. Above from the movie SOME LIKE IT HOT __ __ Jojo was a man who […]
__ Francis Schaeffer did not shy away from appreciating the Beatles. In fact, SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND album was his favorite and he listened to it over and over. I am a big fan of Francis Schaeffer but there are detractors that attack him because he did not have all the degrees that they […]
On 11-15-05 Adrian Rogers passed over to glory and since it is the 10th anniversary of that day I wanted to celebrate his life in two ways. First, I wanted to pass on some of the material from Adrian Rogers’ sermons I have sent to prominent atheists over the last 20 years. Second, I wanted […]
Looking back on his life as a Beatle Paul said at a certain age you start to think “Wow, I have to get serious. I can’t just be a playboy all of my life.” It is true that the Beatles wrote a lot about girls!!!!!! The Beatles – I Want To Hold your Hand [HD] Although […]
August 15-18, 2009 marked the 40th anniversary of the original Woodstock festival. The first Woodstock festival was held from August 15-18, at Bethel, New York. There have been namesake Woodstock festivals since that time. Woodstock was a music festival playing psychedelic rock and roll and many rock bands came to play in that event. There was a crowd that exceeded over 500,000 those three days. Woodstock commemorated the lives of the hippies. It was a festival that was supposed to celebrate peace and love. It was supposed to celebrate the age of the Aquarias. It commemorated the drug culture of the hippie movement.
John P. Roberts and Michael Lang were the two men that organized the event and had it advertised. There were numerous rock groups that performed such as the Grateful Dead, Jimmie Hendrix, Joan Baez, and Janis Joplin, to name a few. Taking drugs was part and parcel of the hippie culture. As the late Francis Schaeffer said, they took drugs as an ideology.
The hippie movement took shape in America in the early 1960’s. If I was to pinpoint a certain event to mark the introduction of the hippie movement, it would probably be the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, California in 1964. It later degenerated into the Dirty or Filthy Speech movement where some students said four letter words over a microphone. The hippies gained a lot of notoriety in the latter portion of the 60’s with the Vietnam War dragging on. They were a protest group that spoke out against the Establishment, racism, sexism, the Vietnam War, war in general, and the old-fashioned values many Americans had held dear at that time. They helped challenge the way America thought about life.
Francis Schaeffer had stated that the hippies were speaking out against the bankrupt values of “personal peace and affluence” that their parents embraced. Schaeffer had described those values as people that want to be left alone to do their own thing in life and not be bothered by anything or anybody’s problems. Affluence means to own wealth. Schaeffer was saying many middle class parents were concerned about making money and living their own life. However, many parents didn’t have a basis for their values. Families went to church because it was socially acceptable. Many of the hippies’ parents upheld the values that their parents and grandparents passed 0n before them but they didn’t have a basis for why those values were right. Many of the hippies’ parents didn’t have a relationship with the Lord. They just adopted the values they were taught growing up. Therefore, the hippie generation rebelled against that and they were trying to seek answers to questions in life. However, the hippies looked to drugs and protesting against the Establishment as the answer. However, the answer was the Word of God. What they needed was Jesus. But they looked in the wrong way.
Woodstock was an embodiment of the hippie counterculture. There was a movie made entitled “Woodstock” in 1970. They were promoting peace and love throughout the world. I remember an old Coke O’ Cola commerical made a number of years ago during the Christmas season. It was an old song (tune) the hippies would sing but the words to that song was changed to make it a Coke commericial. These are the words: “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, I like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.” The original version of the song goes like this: “I like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love. Grow apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtle doves. I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I’d like to hold it in my arms and keep it company.” That symbolized the thinking of that generation. The Woodstock generation was into acid rock music and drugs. The Beatles revolutionized rock music. The Beatles changed their dress and appearance and many Americans patterned their appearance after the Beatles. It was cool to be hip during that time.
The hippies thought during the 60’s they could change society from without. They thought they could change society on the outside. However, the changes the hippie generation sought during that decade had went unfulfilled. Then they modified their appearance in the 70’s and 80’s and became yuppies (young urban professionals). The hippie generation today is older and they are represented by such people as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the list continues. They are trying to change the system within. That’s what they’re doing today. The hippie movement has changed their brand and method. We have government leaders with that mentality in the Obama administration. They trying to make us into a socialist utopia where we can all get along together in peace and love. They want to destroy all racial and sexual barriers. They’re trying to attain to the age of Aquarius.
It’s tragic that the hippies had bought into a false notion of peace and love. Real peace comes through the Lord Jesus. They wanted to create a better and fairer society. However, they never found a basis for truth. The Woodstock generation didn’t believe in absolute truth. Life is meaningless and not worth living if there are no absolutes. The only place to find absolute truth is the Word of God. Sadly, they were looking in the wrong direction.
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Santana – Soul Sacrifice 1969 “Woodstock” Live Video HQ
Heckel was born in Döbeln, Saxony, the son of a railway engineer. Between 1897 and 1904 he attended the Realgymnasium in Chemnitz, before studying architecture in Dresden. He left after three terms, shortly after the foundation of Die Brücke, an artists’ group of which he was secretary and treasurer.[1] The other founder-members, also architectural students, were Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rotluff and Fritz Bleyl.[2] He worked in the office of the architect Wilhelm Kreis until July 1907, when he resigned to become a full-time artist.[1]
Heckel met the other founding members of Die Brücke, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rotluff, and Fritz Bleyl, while studying architecture in Dresden. The foursome equally regarded pursuing a degree in architecture as a compromise with their respectable middle-class parents who would have never supported them, had they wanted to study art.[3] Heckel attended the Dresden Polytechnic Institute for only eighteen months, after which time he accepted a job as a draughtsman at Wilhem Kreis’s architectural studio. He was able to use the position for the benefit of the Brücke. When the firm was asked to design an exhibition room for the lamp manufacturer Max Seifert, Heckel was able to persuade the industrialist that it was worthwhile giving wall space and displays to the Brucke for an exhibition.[4]
As a member of Die Brücke, Heckel often filled the role of business manager, which allowed the collective to network with other upcoming artists at the time, such as the Munich-based Franz Marc. This subsequently led to greater publicity for the collective, such as their mention in the almanac of Franz Marc’s own artistic coalition, the Blaue Reiter.[3]
DPAG-2005-DieBrueckeSitzendeFraenzi
It is worthwhile to note that with the exception of one favorable review by Paul Fetcher in the leading Dresden newspaper Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, the exhibition in Löbtau at the factory of the lamp manufacturer Max Seifert was considered to be a flop. In addition, Heckel’s poster, no longer extant, had been barred from public display by the Dresden police.[5] In 1906 and 1907 the Die Brücke had another exhibition in Löbtau, devoted exclusively to graphics and including a group of woodcuts by Wassily Kandinsky. Unfortunately, the group once again failed to strike a chord with the public.[5] However, much more noteworthy and ironically also notorious, were the next three annual shows by the Die Brücke, this time held in the fashionable Emil Richter Gallery. In large, silent rooms, expensively furnished and smothered with lush carpets, the group’s unconventional paintings and prints struck a foreseeably strident chord, amongst them notably a nude poster of a woman that ruffled many a complacent Dresdener.[5]
Heckel and other members of Die Brücke greatly admired the work of Edvard Munch, and aimed to make a “bridge” between traditional neo-romantic German painting and modern expressionist painting. The four founding members made much use of the print as a cheap and quick medium with which to produce affordable art.
Primitive art was also an inspiration to the members of the Die Brücke. It was Heckel’s brother who introduced the group to African sculpture, and it is noted that their acceptance of primitive art, which was to fortify decisively the expressive yearnings of European artists- Was unequivocal. It is through this style that they found a source of strength in the barbaric figures.[3]
In December 1911, Erich Heckel moved from Dresden to Berlin. Die Brücke was dissolved in 1913. He was classified as unfit for active service during the First World War, but volunteered to serve in an ambulance unit stationed in Belgium.[1] He managed to continue to produce work throughout the war.[1]
In 1937 the Nazi Party declared his work “degenerate“; it forbade him to show his work in public, and more than 700 items of his art were confiscated from German museums. By 1944 all of his woodcut blocks and print plates had been destroyed. After World War II Heckel lived at Gaienhofen near Lake Constance, teaching at the Karlsruhe Academy until 1955. He continued painting until his death at Radolfzell in 1970.
Like most members of Die Brücke, he was a prolific printmaker: Dube’s catalogues raisonné describe with 465 woodcuts, 375 etchings, and 400 lithographs. More than 200 of them, mostly etchings, are from the last seven years of his life.
A major retrospective exhibition, Erich Heckel – His Work in the 1920s, was held October 2004 – February 2005 at the Brücke Museum in Berlin.
In 2000, Heckel’s Dangaster Dorflandschaft (Dangast village landscape) (1909) was sold for £1.21 million at Sotheby’s in London.[6]
The critic James Auer has said that Heckel’s Franzi Standing …
…in many ways encapsulates the principal virtues of the entire Expressionist movement. At once frank and respectful, daring and compassionate, it depicts a girl-woman on the cusp of adolescence, innocent and free yet, at the same time, curious and knowing.
^ Jump up to:abcdCarey, Frances; Griffiths, Anthony (1984). “Erich Heckel”. The Print in Germany 1880–1933. London: British Museum Publications. p. 116. ISBN0-7141-1621-1.
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
I started this serieson my letters andpostcards toHugh Hefner backin September when I read of thepassing of Mr. Hefner. There are manymore to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite cities!!!!
Today is February 23 and I’m reading Proverbs chapter 23:
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A whore is a bottomless pit; a loose woman can get you in deep trouble fast. She’ll take you for all you’ve got; she’s worse than a pack of thieves.
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29-35 Who are the people who are always crying the blues? Who do you know who reeks of self-pity? Who keeps getting beat up for no reason at all? Whose eyes are bleary and bloodshot? It’s those who spend the night with a bottle, for whom drinking is serious business. Don’t judge wine by its label, or its bouquet, or its full-bodied flavor. Judge it rather by the hangover it leaves you with— the splitting headache, the queasy stomach. Do you really prefer seeing double, with your speech all slurred, Reeling and seasick, drunk as a sailor? “They hit me,” you’ll say, “but it didn’t hurt; they beat on me, but I didn’t feel a thing. When I’m sober enough to manage it, bring me another drink!”
King Solomon in the Book of Proverbs takes a long look at the 6 L words and LIQUOR and LADIES are two of those words he looked into in the Book of Ecclesiastes!!!!
He looked into learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20).
v. 1 I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity.[i]2 I said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?”3 I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life.
v. 8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines,[j] the delight of the sons of man. v 10-11 And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.11 Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.
Solomon’s experiment was a search for meaning to life “under the sun.” Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”
I wrote to Hefner in an earlier letter these words:
Francis Schaeffer observed concerning Solomon, “You can not know woman by knowing 1000 women.”
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THIS ARTICLE BELOW MAKES A GREAT POINT ABOUT MILLIE’S BETRAYAL AND HOW IT AFFECTED HEF, BUT SHOULD THAT CAUSE HEF TO ENCOURAGE MORE BETRAYALS OF TRUST?, I READ HEF’S BIOGRAPHY AND I SAW HOW HE LED HIS LIFE AND IT WAS FILLED WITH BETRAYAL OF TRUST!!!
So let’s put together the pieces of the Hugh Hefner puzzle that was at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which grew out of my earlier GetReligion post, “The crucial ‘M’ word — Methodist – that needed to be in every Hugh Hefner obituary.”
This is a journalism puzzle, but one rooted in theology.
Start with Hugh Hefner’s frequent references to his Puritan heritage (with a large “P” and a small “p”). Then you add the details of Methodist faith in which he was raised, in the conservative Midwest of the late 1940s and ’50s. We need more than the word “strict.”
Then you add the remarkable detail that Hefner was a virgin on his wedding day (with the help, he stressed, of lots of foreplay). In other words, young Hefner thought that true love waits. Ponder that.
Only he learned, as a married man, that his fiance had not waited. She had been unfaithful while he was away in the Army. In its lengthy Hefner obituary, The New York Times noted:
A virgin until he was 22, he married his longtime girlfriend. Her confession to an earlier affair, Mr. Hefner told an interviewer almost 50 years later, was “the single most devastating experience of my life.”
The Los Angeles Times added, literally, the doctrinal fallout from this event, in terms of the moral theology written into the Playboy philosophy.
Years later he said the experience set him up for a lifetime of promiscuity because “if you don’t commit,” he told The Times in 1994, “you don’t get hurt.” He said it also showed him what was wrong with traditional attitudes towards sex: “Thinking sex is sacred is the first step toward really turning it into something very ugly,” he said on another occasion.
Put all that together and you have what? Is this a “secular” story, as in a story devoid of faith content and issues? You can make a case that the old Hefner, after this crushing blow during his first marriage, died and then he sought escape from his past, seeking to rise again as a new and changed man – the ultimate playboy.
One more thing: Is it a “secular” story that Hefner openly stated that his goal in life was to knock down centuries of Judeo-Christian teachings on sexuality?
What’s my point? There are all kinds of newsworthy subjects linked to Hefner’s gospel of sex and trendy consumerism.
One of the biggest subjects – for modern religious groups – is the omnipresent role that porn plays in the lives of legions of men, including those in pews and pulpits. The statistics are stunning. Check out this Christianity Today feature – “Porn and the new normal” – on this side of Hefner’s legacy. At the same time, divorce culture looms over the lives of millions of children and, often, the church is afraid to address this reality.
However, I remain fascinated (“haunted” might be a better word) with that stunning, soul-shattering twist that took place when the young Hefner learned his wife had been unfaithful during their engagement.
So far, I have found only one newspaper story focusing on that angle – The Sun over in the U.K. Frankly, I’d kind of like to see the subject addressed in a non-tabloid (think Page 3 girls) format. Still the facts are strong, even presented in this format:
It was the betrayal a young Hefner suffered at the hands of his first wife that marked his formative years and one that he went on to describe as “the most devastating moment” of his life.
He married Mildred Williams in 1949 in the belief the pair had ‘saved themselves’ for one another. The couple had met at college in the mid 40s.
Little did Chicago-born Hefner know that his beloved Milly had slept with another man while her beau served in the US military during the Second World War.
Explaining his heartbreak, he said: “I think the relationship was probably held together by two years of foreplay.
“That wasn’t unusual for our time. In fact, most of my immediate friends didn’t have sex until they married. Milly and I had it just before. I had literally saved myself for my wife, but after we had sex she told me that she’d had an affair. That was the most devastating moment in my life.
“My wife was more sexually experienced than I was. After that, I always felt in a sense that the other guy was in bed with us, too.”
Hefner was determined to change the rules after that, through the birth of Playboy magazine. Meanwhile, the Hefners divorced in 1959, with two children – Christie and David.
There was no looking back after that, at least not that Hefner talked about. The old faith was gone and he dedicated his life to a new one.
Is that a secular story?
GETTY
COURTESY PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES
PAUL ARCHULETA/FILMMAGIC
RICH SCHMITT/AFP/GETTY
These comments below are from Francis Schaeffer’ study on Ecclesiastes and they reminded me of Hugh Hefner who was the closest person to a modern day King Solomon:
In Ecclesiastes 1:8 he drives this home when he states, “All things are wearisome; Man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor is the ear filled with hearing.” Solomon is stating here the fact that there is no final satisfaction because you don’t get to the end of the thing. THERE IS NO FINAL SATISFACTION. This is related to Leonardo da Vinci’s similar search for universals and then meaning in life.
In Ecclesiastes 5:11 Solomon again pursues this theme, “When good things increase, those who consume them increase. So what is the advantage to their owners except to look on?” Doesn’t that sound modern? It is as modern as this evening. Solomon here is stating the fact there is no reaching completion in anything and this is the reason there is no final satisfaction. There is simply no place to stop. It is impossible when laying up wealth for oneself when to stop. It is impossible to have the satisfaction of completion.
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Hefner experienced great success with his PLAYBOY MAGAZINE, but the fame, fortune, and ladies that came with it did not give Hefner ultimate satisfaction.
He was the ultimate ladies’ man but sadly never found The One
Hugh Hefner was, without a doubt, the ULTIMATE ladies’ man.
But after years of looking for love in all the wrong places, the Playboy founder admitted that he never found his soulmate.
Despite three marriages and forever being surrounded by a bevy of bikini-clad Playboy bunnies, poor Hef never really knew true love.
The publishing magnate died of natural causes on Wednesday at the age of 91, surrounded by his loved ones at the Playboy mansion.
But back in 1992, he told the New York Times: “I’ve spent so much of my life looking for love in all the wrong places.”
And then at age 85, he said: “I never really found my soulmate.”
Hef married three times: his college sweetheart Mildred Williams in 1949, Playmate Kimberley Conrad in 1989, and Crystal Harris – 61 years his junior – in 2012.
And aside from that, he’s bragged about bedding more than 1,000 women.
It’s even been claimed that he had his pick of the bunnies living at his mansion every night, and he was known to regularly have multiple girlfriends at the same time.
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Hefner was married with kids twice and both times he left the marriages and embraced the playboy lifestyle.
Ecclesiastes 2-3 Published on Sep 19, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider _____________________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular […]
Is Love All You Need? Jesus v. Lennon Posted on January 19, 2011 by Jovan Payes 0 On June 25, 1967, the Beatles participated in the first worldwide TV special called “Our World”. During this special, the Beatles introduced “All You Need is Love”; one of their most famous and recognizable songs. In it, John Lennon […]
___________________ Something happened to the Beatles in their journey through the 1960’s and although they started off wanting only to hold their girlfriend’s hand it later evolved into wanting to smash all previous sexual standards. The Beatles: Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? _______ Beatle Ringo Starr, and his girlfriend, later his wife, […]
__________ Marvin Minsky __ I was sorry recently to learn of the passing of one of the great scholars of our generation. I have written about Marvin Minsky several times before in this series and today I again look at a letter I wrote to him in the last couple of years. It is my […]
Why was Tony Curtis on the cover of SGT PEPPERS? I have no idea but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that probably it was because he was in the smash hit SOME LIKE IT HOT. Above from the movie SOME LIKE IT HOT __ __ Jojo was a man who […]
__ Francis Schaeffer did not shy away from appreciating the Beatles. In fact, SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND album was his favorite and he listened to it over and over. I am a big fan of Francis Schaeffer but there are detractors that attack him because he did not have all the degrees that they […]
On 11-15-05 Adrian Rogers passed over to glory and since it is the 10th anniversary of that day I wanted to celebrate his life in two ways. First, I wanted to pass on some of the material from Adrian Rogers’ sermons I have sent to prominent atheists over the last 20 years. Second, I wanted […]
Looking back on his life as a Beatle Paul said at a certain age you start to think “Wow, I have to get serious. I can’t just be a playboy all of my life.” It is true that the Beatles wrote a lot about girls!!!!!! The Beatles – I Want To Hold your Hand [HD] Although […]
This week, Woody Allen‘s 2016 title (for as we all know, there’s one each year), “Cafe Society,” starring Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Steve Carell, Corey Stoll, Blake Lively and Anna Camp, opens after a warm reception as the opening film at the most recent Cannes Film Festival. You can read our take from Cannes here, or hang on to scroll through and see where it lands on the list below, but we thought this would be a good time to gussy up our previous sprawling two-part Allen retrospective, and because we’ve been a little harmonious around here of late and miss the sounds of sobbing and breaking crockery, to rank it.
Weathering personal scandal and coming in and out of fashion like flares, Allen’s been at constant work as a director for five decades now, and “Cafe Society” marks his 47th theatrically-released feature. Which means we have a lot to get through, so let’s get straight to it, shall we? Here, ranked worst to best, are all of Woody Allen’s theatrical features —with any list this long, there’s bound to be massive disagreement, so remember, the comments section awaits your ire. Or your congratulations, on the slim chance you agree with all of it.
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13. “The Purple Rose of Cairo” (1985)
Woody Allen made quite a few excellent movies with his ex-partner Mia Farrow in his middle period, as exemplified by this one about a battered wife (Farrow) during the Great Depression. When she goes to the movie theater to escape her troubles, Ted Baxter (Jeff Daniels), one of the characters in the film-within-the-film “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” breaks the fourth wall and comes off the screen to declare his love for her. Hijinks ensue in which Hollywood bigwigs try to separate the world of fiction from reality with increasingly intricate and difficult questions being raised by the wish-fulfillment scenario it posits. The film is one of Allen’s best (he’s said it’s the film that came closest to being exactly as he had envisaged it would) and it also explores our fascination with the moving image in a more serious-minded way than its light touch suggests. In fact, for most of its running time it’s a delightful coming-into-your-own comedy until a perfectly sad, borderline heartbreaking ending that shows up the movies for the beautiful lie they are.
12. “Stardust Memories” (1980)
“Stardust Memories” has been called a homage to Fellini‘s “8 1/2,” though as Tony Roberts says in the movie — “Homage? We outright stole it.” Allen breaks a number of social (and filmmaking) conventions before the film ends. He talks about the emptiness of success and celebrity (the ultimate American taboo) and the futility of romantic love. These are, of course, subjects Allen has touched on previously in his other films but never with such a feeling of despair, despite the quips. The dreamy feel owes a lot to cinematographer Gordon Willis, who can pivot the black-and-white footage from lush to surreal to stark from one shot to the next without losing fluidity. The flashbacks that we aren’t sure are flashbacks are equally dazzling, while the Godard-ian jump cuts add to the dizzying meta film-within-a-film narrative. The characters are more like two-dimensional memories brought to life, lacking depth but overflowing in significance. However the futility of searching for meaning within is also one of the last and best jokes in the film: ”What do you think was the significance of the Rolls-Royce?” someone asks. ”I think it represented his car,” is the answer.
Broadway Danny Rose (1984) 8/9
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Trailer: Broadway Danny Rose 1984
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11. “Broadway Danny Rose” (1984)
While Woody Allen is rightly regarded as a film legend, people often forget that he’s also one of the last remaining links to an earlier showbiz world, having started his career as a comedy writer for folks like Herb Shriner and Sid Caesar, in an era when showbiz promoters were often as colorful as the acts they represented. Enter “Broadway” Danny Rose, played by Allen himself, the legendarily inept yet good-hearted huckster with an unshakeable faith in his stable of z-list talents — “Never took a lesson in her life!” he exclaims in admiration of his wine-glass-playing act. The black-and-white film is told in flashback as a Greek chorus of comedians sit around at a table at the famed Carnegie Deli and swap stories about the agent, and his spot of bother with a mafioso and his moll played by an inspired Mia Farrow. But the plot is merely the hook to hang a series of increasingly funny, absurd and touching anecdotes on, a tribute to bygone days and personalities that also gave Allen himself one of his most lovable acting roles ever.
Woody Allen – Concerto Parigi 1996 – Wild Man Blues Woody Allen & The Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there […]
______________ Gauguin’s 3 Questions Paul Gauguin, now regarded as a French Post-Impressionist artist, was not received well by his old painter friends while living. And having abandoned his wife and children he had no options or resources for getting by. He never found artistic success, either critically or financially in his lifetime. However, there is […]
______________ Woody Allen CRISIS IN SIX SCENES Crisis in Six Scenes S01E01 CZ titulky Something about television brings out the nostalgist in Woody Allen (well, y’know, even more than usual), and understandably – it’s a medium inextricably tied to his own early days. He got his start as a staff writer for The Colgate Comedy […]
First Look at Woody Allen’s Next Movie ‘Wonder Wheel’ Posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2017 by Jack Giroux Another period piece is coming our way from writer-director Woody Allen. We know little about his latest movie, titled Wonder Wheel, which is typical of Allen’s movies. Rarely are character and plot details shared early on. But we […]
_ Woody Allen Bob Hope Tonight Show 1971 Woody Allen Actor Director Writer Date Title (click to view) Studio Lifetime Gross / Theaters Opening / Theaters Rank 7/15/16 Cafe Society LGF $11,103,205 631 $359,289 5 18 7/17/15 Irrational Man SPC $4,030,360 925 $175,312 7 36 7/25/14 Magic in the Moonlight SPC $10,539,326 964 $412,095 17 […]
__ The Woody Allen Special [1969] (Guests: Candice Bergen, Billy Graham and the 5th Dimension) Published on Sep 8, 2016 For all the Woody Allen/television fans, here is the rare 1969 CBS special! Featuring the flawless stand-up of Woody, and skits such as: Woody and Candice having to rehearse nude for an artistic play. A […]
__ Woody Allen The Dean Martin Show Happy Birthday Woody Allen: 15 Quotes By The Maverick Filmmaker News18.com First published: December 1, 2016, 3:30 PM IST | Updated: December 1, 2016 One of the most celebrated filmmakers of Hollywood, Woody Allen turns 81 today. Born and raised in Brooklyn as Allen Konigsberg he is arguably […]
___________ Justin Timberlake Talks ‘Trolls,’ Family Life and His New Album With Pharrell Williams Andrew Barker Senior Features Writer@barkerrant TOM MUNRO FOR VARIETY NOVEMBER 1, 2016 | 10:00AM PT Settling into a hotel bar in Soho after a long day shooting a film for Woody Allen in the Bronx, Justin Timberlake wastes no time ordering […]
_ Woody Allen – standup – ’65 – RARE! Happy 81st Birthday, Woody Allen December 2, 2016 1 Comment Woody Allen turns 81 today. And he shows no signs of slowing down. Allen spent his 80th year being remarkably prolific, even by his own standards. The end of 2015 saw that year’s film, Irrational Man, […]
_ Everything We Know About Woody Allen’s 2017 Film With Kate Winslet And Justin Timberlake October 16, 2016 3 Comments Woody Allen has, it seems, wrapped production on his 2017 Film. The new film stars Kate Winlset and Justin Timberlake. And despite some very public days of shooting, We still don’t know that much […]
9. “Sweet and Lowdown” (1999)
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13. “The Purple Rose of Cairo” (1985)
12. “Stardust Memories” (1980)
11. “Broadway Danny Rose” (1984)
The Daily Hatch 