Weather: Cold with high, whispy clouds -- it sure is nice to see a sunrise, though!

Wildlife: Those damn cats gotta stop bringing in dead birds -- leave 'em outside for the Magpies!
I have to watch out about the deer hanging around day and night. The neighbors are afraid of Mountain Lions following them from out of the forest.

Charity Alert: The Child Health Site : Help a Child in Need Lead a Healthy, Active Life

Media Alert: OK, Janet Jackson's admitted that her stunt was planned. At least one person isn't lying anymore. I hope the FCC just leaves that dumb debacle in the past, but I can't expect it. The football game on Superbowl Sunday has been relegated to third in importance behind halftime, during which I did my laundry, and the commercials, which I intentionally skipped this year.
Ridley Scott's Gladiator was run in "prime time" on ABC. Day-um! What a violent show!
Today's spectacle entertainment may be silly at worst, but the Roman arena was demented. We still have bullfighting, sad to say, but wholesale death and dismemberment are thankfully illegal. (Movies and Video Games aren't real, remember?)
Russell Crowe earned the Academy Award, and gave the BEST speech I've ever heard from an an actor when he accepted his Oscar.
Reasonably good fan site: Maximum Russell Crowe
Scott sometimes has a social message in his films -- Blade Runner and Thelma and Louise for instance, but if there is one here, it's hidden -- unless the message is "Life sucked in ancient times too."
Here's one fairly-informative site: Ridley Scott @ Filmbug
The movie is set in the reign of Commodus, generally acknowledged as the start of the Decline of the Roman Empire: The Roman Empire
Here's some paraphrased quotes: Like Nero, Emperor Commodus' private life was a disgrace and his public extravagances outageous; like Nero, he fancied himself in the circus; and like Nero, he died an undignified death - a professional athlete was hired to strangle him in his bed in AD 192.
177 Marcus Aurelius makes Commodus co-emperor; 180 Death of Marcus Aurelius. Accession of Commodus, who retreats to Rome from Germany; 183 Plot to kill Commodus discovered. Power of favourite Perennis. 186 Fall of Perennis. Power of favourite Cleander; 189 Fall of Cleander; 192 Death of Commodus.
The previous 84 years had seen just five emperors; during the next 104 years Rome should endure no less than 29.
My take on this historical matter -- the people of the Mediterranian were so impoverished then by 200 years of Roman thievery, that repeated warfare and treachery among the ruling class went unchallenged, and doomed this civilization to collapse. I'm amazed that it took another 150 years, plus generations of repeated Barbarian invasions to really kill the empire in Western Europe. After Eastern Emperor Justinian's few victories in the mid-Sixth Century, there wasn't much left to fight over, and the Lombards just came to stay.
That was just a rough sketch of the facts -- Ridley Scott's Movie Empire is an English Empire, stocked with English actors -- Derek (I Claudius) Jacobi is even in the film! The plot is ridiculously untrue, but his sketch of 2nd Century Rome has verisimilitude. I don't think anyone today could present the real horrors of the Colosseum, and I hope nobody tries.
A psychologist might write something about the fascination with perversion and violence that drenches almost every Roman movie -- or why the written record seems to dote on these themes as well, but not I.

Follow Up:
Al Kooper answered my email in less than a day (See Feb. 2)--
Thanks for your kind words & support
Its what keeps the old man goin'
al kooper
Check out his website: AL KOOPER
He's a good prose writer. His mini-diaries and commentaries are very well done, and convey the unique insight of a musician with humor and clarity. You can also catch up with the 40 year career of one of American Pop Music's more important studio men without my irrelevant input.
He also turned 60, and did a concert at the Berklee School of Music on January 31!