GOOD NEWS

Okay, it seems like "it's all bad news" lately....as it often does these days...and has ever since 24 hour news realized crises get more eyes and ears etc. But, in fact, there's been a lot of good news.

Not just states getting rid of laws against carrying small amounts of marijuana or legalizing it, or legalizing gay marriages, or raising the minimum wage, etc...

...or the Obama administration achieving all sorts of things that previous administrations couldn't, or reversing their failures (in the case of almost, not all, but almost all Bush/Cheney policies).

But I had in mind the news that The New York Public Library at 42nd Street is reconsidering removing the stacks that go several stories down under the building full of books often impossible to find outside The Library of Congress. There had been a plan to remove those books to a storage facility in Jersey, and get rid of many, the trend in most libraries.

But someone has to keep these things for scholars and researches and just interested readers to have access to. There's been a big campaign going on ever since the plan to not just remove those underground stacks of books but to remodel the library to make it more like other libraries have become, i.e. computer centers rather than places where you could go and take a book off the shelves and sit and read it in their reading room, one of the coolest places on earth as far as I'm concerned.

One of the great moments in my life was my stopping by the 42nd Street Library after I moved back East in 1999, and looking through the card catalogue and finding almost all my books, some even in "the rare book room"...it made me feel all the work I'd done wasn't all destined to disappear forever.

I'm sure the powers that be will try to find a way to recycle their nefarious plans in the future, but for now, they're off the table, for which to all those writers and readers famous and unknown who have signed petitions and marched and demonstrated outside the library to stop the remodeling and removal of the stacks I say a big Thank You!

ANOTHER OLD FAVORITE QUOTE

"The light made her beautiful
To behold. It was illusion.
But that is a function of light.
As some who are lucky can see."

—Lorenzo Thomas
(from "Sea of Chance")

LATE NIGHT MINI-RANT

Not to mention all those Marines killed in one attack in Lebanon under Reagan and his response was to pull the rest out and act like it never happened...

And not to say people didn't feck up the security in Benghazi, including depending on "private contractors" (an idea the Republicans wanted and promoted) and not spending more of the budget on embassy and diplomat security (which the State Department under Hilary Clinton asked for but the Republican Congress refused to do)....etc....

2GUNS & WE'RE THE MILLERS

So I caught these two movies the other night when I needed a little light diversion and as flawed as they were, it worked. Mostly because they satisfied the conventions of their genres—romantic comedy and action—and had cast members that were fun to watch.

Watching Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington work out on screen was like catching a great jazz guitarist and a great rock guitarist jam competitively. Washington is at his best as the louche seen-it-all veteran of violence and deceit, who still gets deceived, while Wahlberg is an unstoppable force of energy and relentless riffing on his prowess who also gets tricked into leaving home without it.

The plot points are mostly ridiculous, and outdo each other in implausibility, or barely plausible, but...despite way to big a demand on suspension of disbelief (would you believe Marky Mark gets to rev the engine, very loudly, of his muscle car as he pulls up to the curb in an upper-middle-class suburb and from across the street simply stare from that sore-thumb car in this neighborhood as a well guarded and cautious drug lord steps out on his porch in plain sight to hand a brief case full of money to an underling!? and then Whalberg slowly drives off, loudly revving his engine again!) from start to finish, it's still just exhilarating watching Wahlberg make Washington work to keep up.

Let alone watching Bill Paxton rip it as a heartless nasty, even if Edward James Olmos plays the drug lord as though he knows how bad the script is, and Paula Patton seems capable of only one expression no matter the situation her character finds herself in, and the always wonderful to watch Fred Ward is underused. Because between Wahlberg, Washington, Paxton and the always fun-to-hate James Marsden, again, it was worth the ride.

The stars of WE'RE THE MILLERS aren't quite as much fun to watch as Wahlberg and Washington, but Jennifer Aniston is almost always good at rom-coms (even if it's pretty impossible for me to buy her as a down-on-her-luck stripper) and Jason Sudekis does a pretty good job of playing a seemingly soulless pot dealer who gets caught in a squeeze between two much bigger drug dealers.

It seems like more than a coincidence that both these movies are driven by marijuana dealing plots. But that's the only thing they have in common. WE'RE THE MILLERS has more women. 2GUNS is a buddy action movie so there's only one main female, the Paula Patton character. MILLERS has Aniston and the very good Emma Roberts with sometimes very funny Kathryn Hahn almost as prominent.

The jokes aren't bad at times and the acting is credible and sometimes fun. But the conceit of four disparate characters coming together to create the illusion of family is actually appealing, enough to get me to see the film through and mostly enjoy it and feel satisfied at the end. Light entertainment lightly played and pulled off. There's a place for that, for which I'm usually grateful.

GABOUREY SIDIBE SCORES

This speech by Gabourey Sidibe is one of the most powerfully honest and funny and inspiring speeches I've ever heard from anyone in the entertainment business.

Here's the best quote from it:

"If they hadn't told me I was ugly, I never would have searched for my beauty. And if they hadn't tried to break me down, I wouldn't know that I'm unbreakable."

[Read the whole speech, it's worth every word.]

LATE NIGHT MINI-SPEIL: SPERLING/UKRAINE/INEQUALITY

He should have been condemned and ostracized from the NBA a decade or more ago for his outright racist actions, not for a private conversation someone seemed to provoke and secretly record.

Ukraine's leaders have been corrupt and/or incompetent BUT the West, i.e. "us" (U.S.) talked them into giving up their nuclear bombs which, if they still had 'em, the Russians would have to think twice about doing what they're doing, which if it were just kids we'd call bullying.

The Repubs in Congress voted against the federal minimum wage increase because their corporate masters (Koch brothers & big oil, Walton family and their combined wealth greater than all the rest of us combined etc.) want more than mere billions to make them feel less frightened of the void where their hearts and souls should be...AND I DON'T WANNA HEAR ANYONE SAY IN THIS ELECTION YEAR THAT THERE ISN'T ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS, TRY SELLING THAT JIVE TO THOSE TRYING TO LIVE AND EVEN RAISE FAMILIES ON THE PRESENT MINIMUM WAGE!!!!!!...

HAPPY MAY DAY

When I was a kid, May Day still had some of the pagan aspects about it, with maypoles and people leaving baskets of flowers on neighbors stoops etc. But thanks to our local Catholic church, Our Lady of Sorrows, built mostly by Irish immigrants like my father's parents, May Day was becoming a religious day (with processions from church to a local park, girls in white dresses scattering roses as men carried a statue of The Blessed Virgin, i.e. Saint Mary, Mother of Jesus to a nearby park where priests and politicians would rant about how Soviet Russia was on it's way to our shores etc.) to compete with the COMMUNISTS (!!!!!OH NO!!!!!) and their using it as a day to celebrate workers.

Little did I know back then that using May Day to celebrate working people was a USA invention during the struggle to limit the work day to eight hours, back when the work day was back breaking for most. The photo above was taken outside the Quonset hut I lived in with my first wife Lee and our daughter Caitlin, about the time (1968) I learned the true meaning of modern May Day.

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS!

That was the cry then, still sounds right to me...