Five cost-cutting measures in the current health reform package

Ezra Klein has been on fire lately and is my one-stop shop for day-to-day information on what’s going on with health care reform in the Senate.

In the past few days he has been making it crystal clear that the current package in the Senate (yes, even with all of the watering down and no public option, and no Medicare buy-in) is still a tremendous leap forward for America, and that knowledgeable health care wonks are virtually unanimous in support of its passage.

As someone who traveled to Iowa for 10 days in the winter of 2004 to help elect Howard Dean, I am extremely disappointed with his opposition to the  bill. And as a long-time member of the “netroots”, going back to 2002 when I first started reading Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos, I am sad and angry that so many of my fellow progressives don’t seem to understand (a) the meaningful reforms in the current bill, (b) the tenuous thread by which it is hanging on in the Senate and (c) the impossibility (or extreme improbability) of getting a better bill through this Senate or any other in the next 5 to 10 years.

Ezra had a story earlier today about the likelihood that Ted Kennedy would be voting against the current bill, and declares a zero chance of that hypothetical. Furthermore, EMK would be working his butt off to bring progressives to the light:

But the issue is not so much Kennedy’s vote as his absence. If you know the health-care debate really well, it means a lot to say that Jay Rockefeller and Sherrod Brown support this bill. If you don’t know the debate very well, it means virtually nothing. Kennedy was the only liberal with the stature to sell a painful compromise to the base. Would he have succeeded? I’m skeptical. As one of the authors of No Child Left Behind and the original draft of the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit (though he opposed the conference report of that bill), he would have come under withering attack as a sell-out. I’m not sure we ever could have been anywhere but here. But if other paths were available, Kennedy would have been the one to find them.

Via Ezra, here are 5 strong cost-cutting measures in the current bill:

• Bundled payments — paying hospitals for covering an “episode” instead of each individual procedure.
• Prudent purchasing — Exchanges set up with this bill will reject insurers from the pool if they mistreat customers, advertise falsely or raise premiums without transparently showing cause
• Medicare Commission — empowered to propose to Congress (for a filibuster-proof up-or-down vote) ongoing reforms aimed at transforming the system from here (suckage) to there (strong public option, etc)
• Excise tax on expensive insurance plans — Amplifies the incentive for insurers to find ways to bring their costs down
• An individual mandate — By bringing everyone (especially the young and healthy) into the market, insurance can better operate the way it should, instead of insurers or the government being saddled only with the old and/or sick.

Follow the links for more, if you’re curious.

In which Cantwell and Murray piss me off

Dear Senators Cantwell & Murray:

I just read with dismay that you voted against Sen. Dorgan’s amendment regarding the importation of prescription drugs from Canada, citing your concerns about the safety of such drugs.

To be blunt, this is the kind of bullshit that George W. Bush spouted — straight from the mouth of the pharmaceutical lobby — in the 2004 campaign. Whatever marginal problems may exist with such an importation system (all easily manageable) would be far outweighed by the good it would do to counteract PhRMA’s collusive pricing schemes. I’m extremely disappointed with your vote.

Sincerely,
Vince Houmes

Lost comments on comments

Here’s what really annoys me about the web and blogs these days: I leave comments on a number of sites (Publicola, CHS, Erik Lundegaard’s movie review site, my fellow bloggers, etc.) and then I have to remember to go back and check to see if anyone has replied. Sometimes I do if I’m thrilled with what I wrote, or curious about someone’s response, but usually I forget.

Maybe there’s some app/technology out there that auto-detects that you are commenting, and aggregates any responses? WordPress has a “notify me of updates” check-box, and I’ve been using that a bit, but it means I have to remember to hit it. Ideally, there would be one solution that applies everywhere…

Jeanne d’Arc, the heretic saint

If Joan was mad, all Christendom was mad, too; for people who believe devoutly in the existence of celestial personages are every whit as mad in that sense as the people who think they see them. Luther, when he threw his inkhorn at the devil, was no more mad than any other Augustinian monk: he had a more vivid imagination, and had perhaps eaten and slept less: that was all.

I’m reading Shaw’s wonderful play Saint Joan for my reading group this month, and remembering all of the great (and a few bad) things about him as a playwright. One of the most prominent features is the density of his ideas; some authors take a few pages of dialog to gradually bring the audience around to a change in the plot, or to meander through an opinion of a character. Shaw plunges in with the wind in his hair, packing in the concepts bam-bam-bam and expecting you to keep up. To me, it’s like reading fireworks.

This is particularly true of the introductions he wrote for most of his plays. Instead of rehashing the material in the play — beating you about the head and shoulders with it — he dashes around exploring implications, examining biases, reporting history. It’s especially fun to read the 40-page preface, then the play and then return to the preface to see how he brought his opinions out in the dialog.

For example, the main thrust of his argument is that despite history’s solemn pronouncement that Joan was condemned by a cabal of sinister bishops bent on destroying her (he wrote around the time that the Church elevated her to sainthood), his opinion is that Cauchon and the Inquisitor were intent on following the letter of the law, and desired greatly to have Joan return to harmony with the Church. And so in one of my favorite lines from the play, Shaw has the Inquisitor rebuke the English commander who is impatient that they condemn Joan more swiftly:

The Maid needs no lawyers to take her part: she will be tried by her most faithful friends, all ardently desirous to save her soul from hell.

Now, the fairness of Joan’s trial is difficult for me to assess — Wikipedia entries on Joan’s trial are kind of a mess, and the little reading I’ve done of original court documents leads me to believe that her questioners were trolling for as many misdeeds as they could get in order to convict her. But regardless, I’m intrigued that her judges may have wished to perform their duties honestly. One could look at the length of the proceedings, which stretched out to nearly three months, as a sign that they were either trying to squeeze a confession of heresy out of her, or desperately trying to coax her back into the fold.

And was Joan guilty of a high crime against the Church? I say unequivocally yes. A quote from the proceedings:

Then she was told that there is the Church Triumphant, where God is with the saints and the souls who are already saved; and also the Church Militant, that is Our Holy Father the Pope, vicar of God on earth, the Cardinals, the prelates of the Church, and the clergy and all the good Christians and Catholics: and this Church in good assembly cannot err and is governed by the Holy Spirit. Therefore she was asked if she would submit to the Church Militant, namely the Church on earth which is so called. She answered that she came to the King of France in God’s name, and in the names of the Blessed Virgin and of all the Blessed Saints of Paradise, and of the Church Victorious above, and at their command; to that Church she submitted all her good deeds and all she had done or should do. And concerning her submission to the Church Militant she would answer nothing more.

In our increasingly ecumenical times, heresy seems to be virtually impossible and something of a laughable concept. But in Joan’s time the Church was deadly serious in its mission to stamp out demonic incursions and distractions, reasoning quite understandably that you are either with the Church or against It. Stating that she answered only to God was a brash and dangerous move, and an idea that Martin Luther would take up a mere century or so after Joan’s death. This went explicitly against the core hierarchical nature of the Church, and it’s remarkable to me that they spent so much time in questions regarding her refusal to wear a dress, the precise physical appearance and behavior of her angelic communicants, etc. Once you’ve admitted that you reject the Church Militant, you are in the Devil’s Territory.

That’s a topic I’d like to come back to in a subsequent post, and I could write about the fireworks in Saint Joan for hours, but for now I’ve likely worn my audience down to Nobody.

Is it five o’ clock, yet?

There is a very funny moment in Burn After Reading, where freshly unemployed Osbourne Cox (played by John Malkovich) is idly milling around the house eyeing the clock, which ticks ever so slowly towards 5pm. And why? Because he won’t let himself pour a drink until then, responsible gent that he is. But once the magic hour arrives, full speed ahead!

I’m coming to a bit of a similar place in my life right now, but it’s not alcohol that I’m trying to lasso. It’s World of Warcraft. Yes, I’m playing again. And being a mildly obsessive unemployed dude, I’m playing a lot of it. So I’m trying to set up some boundaries, some limits, beyond which the ravenous beast is not allowed. If 5pm was late enough in the day for Osbourne, it’s late enough for me.

Looks like I already raved about the film earlier on the blog, so I’ll just urge you again to see it if you enjoy wacky Coen Brothers fun.

Wish I could find the 5 o’ clock scene, but here’s a little YouTube in case you’re on the fence.

Done with photo class!

For the past 10 weeks, I’ve spent Tuesday night in photo class at the Photo Center NW; this has yanked me away from my comfortable world of Tuesday night trivia, and forced me to spend every week procrastinating taking a lot of photos to meet assorted homework assignments. Thankfully, all that is at an end! I finished the class tonight by showing my final project, which turned out to be three triptychs. People in class were really kind in their comments, and I have to say that I am pleased as punch with the photos. For the first 5-6 weeks in the class I felt that I wasn’t getting anywhere at all; my photos were boring, I was having technical problems and I was just amazed at how awesome everyone else’s photos looked. Somewhere around week 8 I started to feel better, and now I definitely plan to keep at it.

The assignment was to take ~5 photos in a “series” of some kind, associated with each other in some way. I was strongly encouraged to write an Artist’s Statement for the collection, and — this is a rant for another time — I reluctantly said this:

“If there is a theme connecting these photographs (and I’m not confident there is one!) it is that I am interested in motion.”

Each photo links to larger copies on Flickr. Please lemme know what you think! Nobody in class noticed what I’d hoped would be evident about the middle triptych, and I’m kind of tempted to reshoot the entire series, knowing what I know now.

“They talk like people on channels I don’t watch”

This post — my first in a really long time, sorry! — has spoilers about the movie Precious. Stop reading if you want to go see it, as I did, with a blank slate.

——————————-

This was without a doubt the most affecting movie I’ve ever seen. Period. I went into it knowing nothing about it except that it was “a little dark”, and so I wasn’t braced or prepared in any way for what came: rape, incest, physical and emotional abuse, all of which happens to a 16-year-old girl who seems utterly blockaded by life.

The story grabbed me by the throat in the first 10 minutes, and kept punching me for the next hour and a half. Some movies work their way up to a violent or emotional intensity towards the end, but Precious starts hammering away at you in the first half hour, with acting, story and photography that conspires to be utterly heartwrenching to an extent I didn’t think was possible.

When the credits finally started to roll, I couldn’t stay to find out who played the social worker — turns out it is Mariah Carey of all people, whose reputation should skyrocket after her performance — because I needed fresh air, fresh thoughts and perspective. I had to get out of the dark and shake the awful tension out of my system. My stomach was roiling as I waited for my date to come out, and I started to think that I was going to stabilize and be able to talk about the film, process it, find somewhere in my picture of the world to place it.

No dice. We started to talk, and I vomited. Luckily, we were outside. Unluckily, it only made me feel a little better. I felt (and feel) exhausted, as traumatized as I could imagine being after a movie. If the director had been less dextrous at balancing the mundane with the horrifying, my emotional attachment to the characters might have been stretched too far too soon, and my rational side would take over… I could start thinking about the screenplay, what went wrong, why the pathos was unbelievable or overdone, etc. But in Precious I got snared emotionally early and never allowed to come up for air. I’ve cried in films before, but I’ve never felt like I had to not cry for fear of completely losing it in the theater. Turned out it didn’t matter… I “lost it” after it was over.

My date was far more supportive than I expected; there aren’t many more wretched ways to end a date than that, but she neither bolted nor was scornful.  (If I’d known more about the movie, I never would have chosen it for our second date!)

This isn’t really a review of the movie; I don’t know at all what to say about the story. For now, I’m just blown away by the intensity of my reaction to it, and I felt like I needed to write about that.

Do I recommend the movie? Absolutely. Other people seemed able to walk, not stagger, out of the theater, so I think you probably won’t lose your dinner afterwards as I did. And if you do, at least I warned you…

Just read the OED yourself

I read Reading the O.E.D. — One Man, One Year, 21730 pages many months ago, and it has been stuck in my craw ever since. Hopefully a little blogging will get it out of my system, and serve as a Biohazard warning to doe-eyed readers.

As quickly as possible, my complaints:

* The author is immensely dull, as a person, as a lover of words and as a writer.
* The actual definitions from the OED are rarely used, possibly for copyright reasons — although there is a big ad for OED.com at the end of the book, suggesting that the Oxford University Press greenlit the project. Instead, Boring McDullpants usually gives his summary of the definition, followed by an unfunny observation.
* More frequently than you can imagine, he exults, “Can you believe that such a wonderful word exists? Simply that it exists is wonderful. Truly, wonderful. Gosh, that it… just… exists makes me so happy. Now, let me tell you a boring story about my life…”
* Each chapter covers a letter of the alphabet, beginning with a few pages of dreary moaning about his life — at least the guys from Word Freak were semi-social — followed by a selection of the words he found noteworthy.
* The “interesting” words he selects are all Capitalized, for some reason, even though few of them are capitalized in use; that a lifelong lover of dictionaries could allow or commit such a distracting and simple error says a lot about whether he’s done anything but flip pages all these years.
* Even though I hated 80% of the book, I’m grouchy that it’s so short. The man has the nerve to read every word in the English language that begins with X and choose only four words for discussion. Only three from all of the Ys (yepsen, yesterneve, yuky), six from the Qs, etc.

At this point it will help to give an example of a citation as it appears in Reading the O.E.D., including his Wildean thoughts on it:

Quaesitum (n.) The answer to a problem; the thing that is looked for.
It is a proven fact that if you use a big fancy word like quaesitum to describe your silly everyday problems it will be much more satisfying to solve them. At least that’s what I’ve heard.

He’s chosen a dull word. He’s given no etymology that might make the word come alive. He’s capitalized a word unnecessarily. His single creative contribution is a smudge of shopworn comedy which, trust me, is exactly on par with every other jokey fillip he attempts. Ugh.

Enough. I resolved months ago that I would try to salvage something from this experience by rescuing a few of the better words from his oafish paws.

accismus – an insincere refusal of a thing that is desired
advesperate – to approach evening
agathokakological – made up of both good and evil
agelastic – a person who never laughs
airling – a person who is both young and thoughtless
Balaamite – one who is religious for the sake of monetary gain
bedinner – to treat to dinner
bedswerver – an unfaithful spouse
bowelless – having no bowels; lacking in mercy or compassion
constult – to act stupidly together
curtain-lecture — “A reproof given by a wife to her husband in bed” according to Samuel Johnson’s dictionary
disasinate – to deprive of stupidity
boree – one who is bored
flingee – a person at whom something is flung
elozable – readily influenced by flattery
essoiner – a person who offers an essoin, or an excuse for the absence of another
fleeten – having the color of skim milk
frauendienst – an exaggerated sense of chivalry toward women
goat-drunk — made lascivious by alcohol
mawdlen-drunk — “when a fellowe will weepe for kindnes in the midst of his Ale, and kisse you, saying; By God Captaine I loue thee, goe thy waies thou dost not thinke so often of me as I do of thee, I would (if it pleased God) I could not loue thee so well as I doo, and then he puts his finger in his eie, and cries.”
grimthorpe – to restore or renovate an ancient building with excessive spending rather than with skill
gulchin – a little glutton
homodoxian – a person who has the same opinion as you
killcrop – a brat who never ceases to be hungry, and was popularly thought to be a fairy that was substituted for the real child
lipoxeny – the deserting of a host by the parasites that have been living on it
misdevout – devout in an inappropriate way
miskissing – kissing that is wrong
nastify – to render nasty; to spoil
natiform – buttock-shaped
opsigamy – marrying late in life
paracme – the point at which one’s prime is past
pessimum – the worst possible conditions
petrichor – the pleasant loamy smell of rain on the ground, especially after a long dry spell
postvide – to make plans for an event only after it has occurred
preantepenult – [ultimate, penultimate, antepenultimate and then this one]
psithurism – the whispering of leaves moved by the wind
quag – to shake (said of something soft or flabby)
rhypophagy – the eating of filth or disgusting matter
scrupulant – a person who is overly conscientious about confessing his or her sins
short-thinker — one whose thoughts do not carry him far into a subject
supersaliency – “the jumping of the male for the act of copulation”
toe-cover — a present that is both useless and inexpensive
tricoteuse – a woman who knits; specifically, a woman who during the French Revolution would attend the guillotinings and knit while the heads were rolling
umbriphilous – fond of the shade
unbepissed – not having been urinated on; unwet with urine
vulpeculated – robbed by a fox
yepsen – the amount that can be held in two hands cupped together; also, the two cupped hands themselves

Now, wasn’t that list kind of fun? I’m not enough of an egotist even on my stupid blog to think that I can add something funny or insightful to each of these, because they are beautiful and funny in their own right. But this drone got an advance from a publisher for his stunt — read the whole thing in a year, and then bitch about it. Yay book sales!

The final thing I’ll mention is the author’s relentless negativity. He gripes about anything and everything: scientists, statesmen, lovers, men, women, children, crowds, travelogue authors and himself with a bullheaded pessimism you’d expect from someone slouching in a bar, not someone paid to read and write about one of our finest cultural achievements. (Note: For about a year, I used wordpress categories to track how many of my blog posts were “plaudits” and how many were “scorn”. Turns out I love 8 things for every 3 I hate.)

The front cover has a snippet from a review by Nicholson Baker of the NYTBR: “Shea has walked in the wildwood of our gnarled, ancient speech and returned singing incomprehensible sounds in a language that turns out to be our own.” Now that’s a book I’d like to read.

The Tale of Tor and the Briny Demon

Once upon a time, Tor the fisherman and his wife Twillabee lived happily at the edge of the forest. He would fill his little boat with fish day after day, and he was so skillful that one day he was seized by the Briny Demon, who said to him, “What gives you the right to take so many of my fish? From now on you will work for me to repay all that you have stolen!” With that, he dragged poor Tor down under the water.

Twillabee was worried when he didn’t come home that night, and was increasingly worried as the days went by. One day, one of Tor’s fellow fishermen was out catching fish, and looked down through the clear water. To his great surprise, he saw Tor scrambling around at the bottom of the sea, moving heavy clamshells hither and yon. Nearby lurked the terrible Briny Demon, watching all the while.

When Twillabee heard that her beloved Tor had been captured, she flew deep into the forest; miles and miles she ran to the tallest stand of cedar where the Forest Wraiths made their home. “Won’t you help us?” she cried, “For the Briny Demon has stolen my husband, and forces him to work night and day in a place contrary to his nature.” The Forest Wraiths, who had frequent cause to distrust their watery counterpart, rustled and creaked among themselves while Twillabee sat nervously nibbling a sweet thistle at their feet.

“It is not right that Tor be taken from his rightful sphere,” they finally said, as a heavy waxen seed rolled down from one of their trunks to rest at her feet. “Drop this seed in the ocean where he is working, and the tree that grows will allow him to climb to freedom.” As soon as it was light, Twillabee rowed out to place where Tor had been seen in captivity. She dropped the seed, and watched it sink until it reached the bottom. Immediately it sprang apart, piercing roots down amongst the rocks and shooting a mighty tree toward the surface of the water. Twillabee scurried to move the boat as the tremendous tree came bursting and splashing through.

Down below, Tor began to climb the tree towards safety, ignoring the futile thrashing of the Briny Demon, whose magic was powerless near the tree. But at the surface, Tor found that his lungs had lost their love of air, and he gasped in it as though he were drowning. Reluctantly, he slunk back into the water, clinging to the tree for safety, and Twillabee rowed away vowing to find help in making him whole again.

She climbed Mount Tillianpalam, where it was said that the Zephyr Spirits began their rushing races down its slopes. She climbed and climbed, till at last she dropped exhausted where the clouds first touched land at its peak. Soon the winds spoke to her, saying, “What brings a creature of the lowlands to these high places?” When they heard of the treachery of the Briny Demon, they were enraged. “It is not right that Tor should be made to fear the air he was made to breathe!” they whistled, and kissed Twillabee on the mouth with a sweetened puff of mountain air. “Take this kiss to him, so he may live again among his kind.”

She hurried out in her boat again, and indeed her kiss healed his lungs — he climbed into the boat and rowed them home. As Tor and Twillabee built the fire that night they were surprised by a visit from Incendius, whose hot whispers filled their little home. “We spirits have all been troubled by this Briny Demon, who has so selfishly interfered with the spheres of men and gods. Tomorrow you must set things right!” At this, a crackling ember, different from the others, rolled out of the fire to lay at Tor’s feet.

The next morning, Tor went out to fish as usual, and soon the Briny Demon boiled up in a rage, reaching into the boat so as to capture him again. Tor swiftly opened a little leather pouch, and flung the hot cinder at his foe, who was burned horribly as it passed through his slippery body. The Briny Demon fell wounded back into the sea, and the fisherman watched in horror as the fish bit off parts of the weakened demon as the body fell.

Tor returned to his fishing, and he and Twillabee lived happily ever after.

(Rough draft of my first fairy tale. I like some parts of it a lot, other parts are annoying. Lemme know what you think!)

Still unemployed, one week later

I sneaked out of the rat race as it was entering extra innings, and have not yet looked back.

Nor have I called my parents. They find these things out through the grapevine. Someday perhaps I’ll grow up, a pair, more self-assured, etc.  Until then, too bad. Most people my age are neck-deep in the blast furnace of their own child-rearing, and seem to my jaded eyes to be gamely suiting up for 12-18 years of drudgery and bullshit. I applaud their devotion to the genetic imperative, but this Selfish Gene has turned out to be supremely selfish indeed.

At this point I have always thrown in the caveat that “with Imperial blessing and the kiss of Fortune” I would gladly spawn with the right person… I think those days are waning, have waned, will wane, might have already waned, party-on-Wayned. She of the golden loins could always be right around the corner, but realistically I’d guess she’s walking away from the corner.

In brighter news, I watched three films yesterday, fresh fruits from my fallow field.

Bright Star — Well, I won’t be confusing Keats and Yeats anymore. (Oh shit, I just thought of something. What if Yeats also died of tuberculosis at 25 after failing to consummate his love affair with an apple-cheeked lass who loved sewing? Wikipedia comes to my aid. Whew.) It took this movie about 15 minutes to get me choked up, and kept banging that gong for the next hour and a half. By the time I got out I was wrung out, exhausted, weakly raging against this cruel world that stamps so beigely* upon the fragile tundra of Young Love. This movie would have ended more happily had the MacArthur Foundation dropped a cheque in the post for our J. Keats. Sometime shortly before he got sick, that is.

In all seriousness, I can’t recommend this movie to anyone. It’s beautifully photographed, the acting is superb, the dialog largely witty, the pacing deft and those of any gender or proclivity would find succor in daydreaming of at least one half of this smokin’-hot-fuckable couple. But honestly. Who goes to see movies like this? If you wanted to go, you’d go. What review would sway you? “Ah, a costume drama about a 19th century poet?” What need do we have of more films like this? Even really good ones? None. More films about the Lost Boys of Sudan, please. Thank you.

Gilda — I watched this mostly to get caught up on Rita Hayworth, in particular because of this quote from my twitter buddy ReelKnitting: Regarding her failed relationships, Rita Hayworth said, “Men go to bed with Gilda and wake up with me.” Intriguing, yes? But it turns out that Gilda isn’t the best reason to watch Gilda, not really even in the top five. Reasons to See Gilda, #1: The writing. The screenplay by Jo Eisinger is sharp, philosophical, funny and confusing as hell. #2: Glenn Ford, who I’d never heard of, but is handsome, funny and intriguing throughout. (Also, he went from supporting Adlai Stevenson in the ’50s to being pro-Reagan in the ’80s! Must have been an interesting couple-a decades around the Ford family dinner table.) #3: The suits, which are wide, dark and gorgeous. #4/5: A tie for George Macready (playing the villain, and who I remember from Paths of Glory… now there’s a movie I need to watch again) and Steven Geray (a Hungarian actor that plays a wise and perceptive bathroom attendant).

Glenn Ford

Oh, all right. I’ll admit that Rita Hayworth is more interesting than the suits, so I guess that makes her the #3 reason to see Gilda. Still, those suits are eye-popping. The end of the film is rather unsatisfying, and left me wishing that it’d been made before the Hays Code started making a hash of things.

Grand Hotel — I picked this one because I wanted to know something about Greta Garbo, but ended up being more interested in Joan Crawford and the Barrymore brothers. Evidently this film was the first time a studio said, “Hey, what would happen if we threw all of our stars into one film?”, and I can report that it’s a lot of fun. I won’t try to review the movie, but I do want to say that it was a thrill to finally see Wallace Beery; one of my favorite movie moments is Tony Shalhoub sputtering to John Turturro in Barton Fink: “Wallace Beery! Wrestling picture! Whaddaya, need a roadmap?!”

You can relive that and other delicious Shalhoub lines in this YouTube collection that some madman uploaded:

More later. I fully intend to review the execrable Reading the O.E.D. at some point, but don’t hold your breath.

*Is “beigely” a word? I believe it should be.

PS: Can you believe that “execrable” is spelled that way? I’m having a hard time with it. Also, I’d just like to point out that the sweet, kindly Lionel Barrymore of Grand Hotel would, merely 14 years later, be playing the mean ol’ son-of-a-bitch Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. Crazy!