A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

I can't remember if this was a Thanksgiving photo or not. But this was probably taken in 1986, judging by my beard and the deerskin rug on the living room floor.    I can’t remember the last happy Thanksgiving that I experienced in Miami before my mother died in July of 2015.   As Thanksgiving 2020 lurches its way to my current abode in New Hometown, Florida like a dreadful creature from a 1930s horror film (complete with artificial fog generated by dry ice), I sit in my now claustrophobic bedroom/study and try to recall a holiday season that wasn’t in some way dampened by discord or drama. And even taking into account the passage of time, the unreliability of memory, and my own biases, I can’t remember any truly happy Thanksgivings where my half-sister Vicky was present. Oh, sure. I can recall those recurrences of the holiday that were peaceful and even joyful because Vicky was absent. Thanksgivings at home with Mom and – on occasion – friends and family members who ...

Today is Sunday, May 10, 2020. As I start this blog post, it's almost 3:30 PM in my corner of Florida. It's a warm afternoon ﹘ 81℉ (27℃) under partly sunny skies ﹘ and it looks like it might rain. Of course, this is immaterial; ever since I left Miami and moved here I rarely ever go for walks or do anything outdoorsy, so the weather only affects me if there are thunderstorms or severe cold snaps. Right now, according to the forecast, we are experiencing the high for the day; at night the temperature is expected to drop to 65℉ (18℃). In a few weeks, if Florida weather sticks to its normal patterns, the days will be increasingly hotter, stickier, and less pleasant. Today is also Mother's Day, the 10th occurrence of the occasion since Mom got sick in 2009/2010 and the fifth since she died. My older half-sister Victoria and I managed to "celebrate" the day with our Mom for the last time in 2015 ﹘ she died a little over two months later, on July 19, 2015 ﹘ and eve...

Illustration by Erik_Erik via Pixabay Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On, the blog-within-a-blog section of A Certain Point of View that by design is not devoted to politics or reviews. It's Monday, March 9, 2020, and it's already mid-morning in my corner of Florida. Outside, the temperature in my area is 68℉ (20℃) under mostly cloudy skies. The forecast calls for a high of 76℉ (24℃) and a low of 59℉ (15℃) is expected for tonight.  I'm really tired today. I had a rare but enervating bout of insomnia last night: I was a bit drowsy around 10 or so. but the drowsiness vanished sometime around 11 PM. I watched eight episodes of Star Wars: Resistance back-to-back, thus finishing the second and final season of that Sequel Trilogy era animated series from Lucasfilm Animation. I also read a chapter and a half of Richard B. Frank's Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War - July 1937-May 1942 in an effort to get s...

Hello, Dear Reader. It's Monday, March 2, 2020, and it's late morning here in my corner of Florida. Currently, the temperature outside is 73℉ (23℃) under partly sunny skies; per the forecast for the day, the high is expected to reach 76℉ (26℃), while the low for tonight will be 59℉ (15℃). Well, in three days I will be 57 years old. I have mixed feelings about this; on the one hand, I am glad to be alive and thrilled that Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss , the short film I wrote last year for my friend Juan Carlos Hernandez, turned out as well as it did. So far, in the three weeks since Juan posted it on YouTube, Ronnie has been watched 1,216 times (as of this writing). It has also gotten its first official review ; Blogger/reviewer Denise Longrie says Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss is an "amusing and enjoyable short." A still image from Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss.  She goes on to describe the dynamic of the family ...

I'm still over the moon about Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss. © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions Wow, gang! Man, it's been an amazing 10 months for me as a screenwriter. That's about how much time since my high school buddy Juan Carlos Hernandez first challenged me to write a two-minutes-long short film for him and his wife Adria to act, direct, and produce. I didn't quite manage to write a movie that brief; the short that is now A Simple Ad has a running time of 3:41, which is nearly twice as long as the requested length. Still, I wrote the script in early April of 2019, and it was uploaded to Juan 's YouTube channel a few weeks later. A relatively short time after A Simple Ad was shared with the world, Juan asked me to write a sequence for a film he was doing in the Big Apple with Adria and their son Anthony (a talented young man who I predict will have a great career on stage and screen). My contribution was modest, but it complemented what ...

Jeronimo Diaz-Granados (1919-1965) in his Aerocondor pilot's uniform. (Author's collection) This column was originally published in the February 13, 1986 issue of Catalyst, Miami-Dade Community College - South Campus's student newspaper. I'm proud to have been his son Alex Diaz-Granados Opinions Editor Early in the morning of Feb. 13, 1965, a C-46 transport was cleared for takeoff from Miami International Airport. There were no passengers aboard, just cargo. Its destination: San Salvador. Unfortunately, two minutes after leaving the ground, the plane crashed in an auto junkyard on NW 47th Street not far from  NW 37th Avenue. The two-man crew was killed. That was 21 years ago today. When I was six years old, the thought of something unsettling about my family crossed my mind when I observed that other children often talked about something wonderful and unknown ﹘ fathers. I, being curious and innocent, asked my mother what a "father" w...

I took this photo of the man-made East Wind Lake during one of my daily walks around my former neighborhood in June of 2014. (Photo Credit: Alex Diaz-Granados - own work) Hello, Constant Reader, and welcome once again to Bloggin' On, the no-reviews, no-politics zone of A Certain Point of View where I talk about what I am up to and things that are on my mind. Think of it, if you will, as a blog-within-a-blog that lets you get to know me a little better. Right now it's past noon in my corner of Florida; the temperature outside is 75℉ (24℃) under partly sunny skies, which is comfortably nice for the season. The high temperature for the area is expected to reach 76℉ (24℃); the low tonight will be 56℉ (14℃), and no rain is expected to fall in our area, either. I had planned to write a review of John Denver: Rocky Mountain High - Live in Japan, but even though the DVD arrived yesterday afternoon, I have not watched it. When I went to bed last night, I promised myself tha...

My mom as she was on this date in 2009. Little did we know that she only had six years left to live and that of those, her last five would be her worst.  (Photo Credit: Alex Diaz-Granados) Tempus fugit. It's still a source of astonishment and bewilderment to me, even a decade later, how unpredictable and traumatizing life changes can be. Consider my mother's last 14 years on Earth. She entered the 21st Century (back in 2001) a bit slowed by the passage of time but still full of life and hope for the future, and died lost in a fog of dementia and impotence in the summer of 2015, leaving behind two adult children who distrust and dislike each other.    Between January of 2001 and July 19, 2015, my poor mom went through the following health crises: A diagnosis of gastric antral vascular ectasia (GAVE), which is often referred to as watermelon stomach. Per the Mayo Clinic's website,"the term comes from the internal appearance of the stomach lining in those...

A view of man-made East Wind Lake, taken before I moved out of my former home in 2016. Photo Credit: © 2015 Alex Diaz-Granados (own work)  Hi there, Dear Reader, and welcome once more to Bloggin' On, the feature section where I take off my hats of product reviewer and/or political commentator and just talk about things that are on my mind. It's early morning on Monday, December 30, 2019, at least in my corner of Florida, and the sky is beginning to lighten as the sun rises ever so steadily over the horizon. Outside, the temperature is 71℉ (22℃) under cloudy skies; per the forecast on my PC's weather app, the high temperature is expected to reach 76℉ (25℃), it will remain mostly cloudy, and we may even see some rain. I haven't watched any weather updates on TV today, but just by looking at the forecast trends on my computer, it looks as though a weak cold front is passing through, as the high for tomorrow is only expected to reach 65℉ (19℃). Tomorrow, of cours...

Image by David Mark (Pixabay) Hi, there, Constant Reader! Welcome to yet another edition (and my 400th blog post for 2019) of Bloggin' On, the virtual space on A Certain Point of View  in which I step out of my usual personas of media product reviewer and/or occasional political commentator. Well, it's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving 2019, the fifth observance of the holiday that I spend with other folks instead of my immediate (or even extended) family. Mom died in the summer of 2015, five months before the holiday season of that year. I cut all relations with my older half-sister as a result of long-standing resentments that had been building for decades, but especially after Mom and I discovered what she had in mind for the "after-Mom-died" phase in both our lives, so I have not observed any holidays with my closest blood relation since the Fourth of July of '15. And most of my surviving cousins on both sides of my family live in Colombia, so I can'...

Debris from a neighbor's house that landed on the patio of my former home in Miami during Hurricane Sandy's passage through South Florida, October 26, 2012. Photo Credit: Alex Diaz-Granados (own work)  Hello again and welcome to another installment of Bloggin' On, which is a feature on A Certain Point of View where I break away from the usual reviews and political commentary and just talk about everyday stuff or things that are on my mind that isn't the "usual fare" of this blog. Well, it's almost early evening here in my corner of Florida on Saturday, October 26. Right now it's partly sunny outside; the temperature is 81℉ (27℃) and the humidity is at 82%. It still doesn't feel like fall here, even though summer ended over a month ago. It's not as hot as, say, mid-July or August, but if memory serves, it used to start getting cooler in the Sunshine State by mid-October. Then again, I've only been living in this part of Florida fo...

Screenshot of Strategic Command WWII: World at War. © 2018 Fury Software/Slitherine Ltd.  Hi, everyone! Welcome to today's "upcoming events" blog post in A Certain Point of View. As the weekend approaches, I'd like to let you know what my plans are regarding content and the future of this blog. In the near future, I'll try to focus my attention on writing reviews and back off from writing about politics, the conservative/liberal divide, and Donald Trump. This will probably result in a slow-down as far as creating blog posts since much of my energies as of late were spent writing about the toxic political scene at home and abroad. Additionally, I closed my Quora account this morning, and because most of my Trump-related content was derived from my answers on that site, I'll be forced to come up with new material that will be exclusive to A Certain Point of View if I have any hopes of getting any income from AdSense and Google. So, Constant Reader, I don...

Tempus fugit. That, my dear readers, is Latin for "time flies." Today is Friday, July 19, 2019. Another regular work-week is about to come to an end. Just a few days ago it was Monday. Where did the time go? My mom, about 10 years before I was born, at Laguna de Tota in Colombia. One of my cousins says he went there recently and found that the boat in the photo at the top left still exists.  Tempus fugit. Four years ago today, exactly, it was a gray, rainy Sunday afternoon. My mom had died in the pre-dawn hours and by seven-thirty in the morning the people from the funeral home had come for her body. The last time I saw Mom at our townhouse in East Wind Lake Village, she was being wheeled outside on a gurney, with a train of people that included my older half-sister and two of her cousins. The nurse from the Catholic hospice trailed behind, no doubt eager to get home after spending 16 hours keeping a watch on my mother. I sat on the edge of the sofa, too tired...

Our last family photo was taken on July 11, 2015. Mom passed away eight days later  As much as I enjoy having a Facebook account , and even taking into account that for the time being it is my main link to my friends and family, sometimes I get emotional curveballs tossed at me via its Memories feature. If you don't have a Facebook account (and I can think of at least one individual who does not have one), all you need to know is that every day, the social network re-publishes posts one created on the same date x years ago. The Memories posts are, of course, highly dependent on the content you create daily on Facebook. If, for instance, I share a post from this blog on my timeline today, the Memories feature will repost it on my timeline on April 25, 2020 (unless, of course, I turn off the feature). Over the past few days (not today, mercifully), I have seen a couple of re-posts that have made me relive the beginning of the darkest period of my life: the decline and e...