Shira Haas

            On Tuesday morning I revised my translation of “À la manière de Brassens” (In the Style of Georges Brassens) by Boris Vian and ran through singing and playing it in English. I finished working out the chords for “Ballade Des Oiseaux de Croix” (Song of the Birds of the Cross) by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through singing and playing it in French and English. Tomorrow I’ll upload both songs to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare them for publication. The latter will probably be posted tomorrow. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing acoustic guitars. I’ll play the Martin tomorrow but I might take it to a luthier afterwards to try to get my tuning problem fixed. 

            I weighed 85.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I cleaned my older warm mist humidifier. It took a little longer because I only had three cups of vinegar. I’ll have to buy more on Saturday. 

            I weighed 86.35 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since April 8. 

            I woke up from my siesta at 16:18 but managed to get away for my bike ride before 17:00 and so I went all the way downtown and back. 

            I weighed 86.2 kilos at 18:21. That’s the most I’ve tipped the scale in the evening since April 14.

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:11. 

            I watched the first 40 minutes of Fritz Lang’s silent film Siegfried. It might have something I can use to finish my “Seven Shades of Blues” Movie Maker project. There was always a visual magic to Lang’s silent films and I’ve used clips from a few of them for some of my previous projects. 

            I made a new batch of gravy and had some with oven fries and a chicken leg while watching the second thirty minutes of Captain America: Brave New World. 

            Sam has gone to see Isaiah in prison to find a clue as to what caused him to try to kill President Ross. Ross’s security advisor Ruth spies on their conversation. Later Joaquin has hacked into the White House’s CCTV system. He sees that just before Isaiah and the other’s attacked the president their smart phones flashed at them. Meanwhile Ruth is looking at the same footage and notices the same thing. Sam is driving when Sidewinder starts firing at his car, then tosses a grenade inside. It blows up but Sam escapes and they fight. Sam gets stabbed and shot. Sidewinder says the buyer that hired him bases every move on calculated probabilities and has predicted Sam’s last few moves. Sam surprises him anyway and takes him out. Then Sidewinder’s phone rings and the buyer tells Sam he’s not going to like what happens next. Sam reviews the CCTV footage and notices that Isaiah or whoever was controlling him deliberately missed the president. Joachin traces the buyer’s call to Camp Echo 1 in the middle of a forest in West Virginia. Sam concludes it’s a top secret high security prison. They head there immediately. Ruth arrives at the prison where Isaiah and the other White House shooters are being held only to find a prison guard in a trance opening up the cell of two of them and assassinating them before killing himself. On his communication device can be heard the song “Mr. Blue” by The Fleetwoods from 1959 (I remember as a teenager listening many times to a cover of that song by Gary Lewis and the Playboys from their Everybody Loves a Clown album). Meanwhile Ross gets a call from the prison that Sam is approaching. The call is from the guard who has been watching a certain prisoner that Ross has been concerned about. Suddenly the guard is shot and the prisoner talks to Ross with the same voice as the buyer. He tells Ross that he plans on slowly destroying him. It was he who arranged for the fake assassination attempt. Sam and Joaquin reach Camp Echo at night. Sam has a drone called Red Wing that follows his voice commands to laser cut the fence and loop the feed on the cameras. They make it inside but find no prisoners but they do find the lab where Isaiah and many other prisoners were experimented on. Sam finds a file on Ross and samples of the pills he’s been taking. Then Samuel Sterns reveals himself as the prisoner behind the attacks who is also Sidewinder’s buyer. He turns on the light and we see that he has green skin like the Hulk because of gamma rays and that his brain is so large that it is on the outside of his skull (Sterns is the character from Incredible Hulk comics from the 60s who was the Hulk’s arch enemy, the Leader. The Leader in the comics was much less gross looking and had a very tall head with the brain still inside of his skull). Ross kept him in prison and used his mind to help him become president. Sam tries to attack but meets a painful force field. Then several prison guards controlled by the Leader attack Sam and Joaquin while Leader walks away. It takes them some pain to beat them. In the hall they meet more guards and behind them they see Ruth. She tells the guards to stand down and they turn on her and so she takes them all out in Black Widow style. Outside of the prison fence, Sam and Joaquin are arrested by FBI under Ross’s orders, despite Ruth’s protests. Then suddenly they hear “Mr. Blue” and the leader takes over their minds to try to kill them and so Ruth helps Sam and Joaquin escape in her car. 

            Ruth is played by Shira Haas, who was diagnosed with kidney cancer at the age of two and went through two years of painful treatment. In her early teens she performed in plays in Tel Aviv. Her TV debut was in the series Shtisel in 2013. Her film debut was a starring role in Princess in 2014 for which she won the Jerusalem Film Festival best actress award. Her international film debut was in Natalie Portman’s A Tale of Love and Darkness. She starred in Broken Mirrors. She co-starred in Noble Savage, Esau, and Asia. She starred in the series Unorthodox, for which she became the first Israeli actress to be nominated for a prime time Emmy. Her Captain America character is a variation on the Israeli superhero Sabra. Since this movie came out during Israel’s assault on Gaza she received a lot of anti Israel threats and so the production downplayed her character’s Israeli background.