DREAM TEAM

I watched the celebration for the US Women's World Cup soccer team this morning live on local (NYC) TV and was knocked out by how feckin cool they all are. When I was a kid Babe Ruth was still alive, and Babe Didrikson. Jack Dempsey was still an Irish-American hero, especially for my family since my mother's father's family were Dempseys, and Joe Louis, "The Brown Bomber" was heavyweight champ and Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball and was my personal hero, and Broadway Joe Namath was the coolest professional football hero ever and on and on I could go but no athlete or group of athletes in my lifetime have ever been as cool as the 2019 women's world cup soccer team, period. And Megan Rapinoe is the coolest person alive right now in my book.

MUSIC YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS

A shot taken by my grandson Donovan of his father (my oldest son, Miles Lally) on bass (in hat), songwriter and singer Greg Farley on guitar, and Michael Lesko on drums, playing in Manhattan on Sunday at a gig I couldn't make but wish I had been able to. The family that plays together...

MATCHES MY ANALYSIS BUT EXPRESSED MORE CLEARLY

Here's the link.

EVERY MONTH IS POETRY MONTH

ANOTHER LIST!

Still don't have the compulsion to constantly make lists that I had pre-brain-op, but, every now and then I feel the urge to make one again, as I did the night I saw YESTERDAY. I had mentioned a favorite film, ABOUT TIME, in my post/review and while falling sleep suddenly found myself doing an alphabet list of one movie per letter, of films I like that have that same fantasy quality, not LORD OF THE RINGS or HARRY POTTER fantasy, but the what-if kind of fantasy. I cane up with more than usual before falling asleep, and the next day added a few that might stretch the definition (UMBRELLAS OF CHEROURG for instance isn't a fantasy per se but the fact it's all sung makes it feel like one) :

ABOUT TIME
BIG
CHANCES ARE
DROP DEAD FRED
ERASERHEAD
F
GROUNDHOG DAY
HEAVEN CAN WAIT
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
JUST LIKE HEAVEN
K
L.A. STORY
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
NATURAL, THE
O
PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, THE
Q
R
SECRET OF ROAN INISH, THE
T
UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, THE
V
WHALERIDER, THE
X
YESTERDAY
Z

PROTEST

You know that image of the lone Chinese man standing in front of a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989 during the demonstrations for democracy? He wears a white shit and what look like black pants and he's carrying a shopping bag in one hand.

If I were young and still living in DC I'd get all my activist friends to dress exactly like him, and grab a paper shopping bag and go stand in front of the tanks that dump has planned for the July 4th festivities on the National Mall.

The tanks are supposed to be stationary so it would only be symbolic, but if hundreds or even thousands of people did that, it would have the kind of impact that protests in the 1960s that radical art and theater groups came up with. Time to revive those tactics.

YESTERDAY

YESTERDAY is a delightful fantasy/fable flick that is an antidote, no matter how temporary, to all that's bringing us down in the world right now. Just as the music of The Beatles did in another time of trouble, YESTERDAY reminds us of what's most important (even if in an obvious way).

I don't know how they got the rights to the music, but that alone makes this worth seeing. Then add the imagination of Jack Barth (ATTACK THE BLOCK among other favorites of mine) and the writing of Richard Curtis (ABOUT TIME, another movie fable favorite of mine) and the direction of Danny Boyle (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE among other faves), and add the updated pertinence of Himesh Patel and Lily James playing the leads, with a great supporting cast (including Ed Sheehan and Kate McKinnon) and you have lots of reasons to take the time out to go catch this wonderful little gem.