GOTTA LOVE PHELPS AND THE USA WOMENS GYMNASTIC TEAM

At least I do. Quite a trip watching the girls win the gold and Phelps, with the help of his teammates, become the Olympian with the most medals of all time (and more still possible). I'm hooked.

THE OLYMPICS 2012 (SO FAR)

So I missed most of the opening show and was sorry. Mostly because I didn't get to see the nurses bouncing on hospital beds dance number celebrating "national health"—the Brit healthcare system that covers everyone for free and even the conservatives don't complain about.

But I did get to see the march of nations or whatever it's called and couldn't help thinking how, despite the spreading diversity of most countries now, there are some nationalities that seem to produce more beautiful people than others. And it doesn't seem to have anything to do with what people still call "race" because some east European countries or African countries or Asian countries seem to be full of beautiful people while others not so much.

I know, that's judgmental, but nonetheless true enough from my perspective.

And despite, or rather because of, Paul McCartney's voice not being what it used to be, especially as he began singing "Hey Jude" I was all the more touched by the power of a musical riff to become universally familiar and comforting.  Also touched thinking that he's an old man now no matter how much he dyes his hair or can still jump around a stage.

Yeah, there were some moving moments (like McCartney), some yuck moments (Mitt and his wife standing up and waving like royalty to the USA contingent as if they were already the first family), etc. But once the games got really under way so much of the scoring and the rules and procedures seemed so arbitrary and subjective that I quickly lost interest in some things (what is it with the mostly weird "dance" moves the "American" female gymnasts do in their floor routines, whereas say the Russian female gymnasts who, the announcer said, have to take ballet lessons from childhood on in order to be gymnasts, were so less muscle-y and stiff and strange in their "dance" movements that actually flowed and seemed, well, dance like).

Yet somehow I get invested in seeing the USA win more medals than China anyway and become fascinated with women's archery, or two man beach volleyball, or the team volleyball, especially the women and the impressive and amazingly named Destinee Hooker, or women's weightlifting or men's and women's soccer (things I would normally lose interest in quickly). So I guess I'll keep checking in, especially on the cable networks that are carrying some events during daytime which are less popular, or so the TV execs think, but I often find more interesting.

And I'll remember some moments even as I'll continue to not like the announcer's seeming to get almost everything wrong, talking when I wish they'd keep quiet, keeping quiet when i wish they'd explain something, getting way to personal and pushy with young athletes who have just lost or totally cliched with others who have just won something. It's a strange ritual these games, and totally hyped and as I said mostly arbitrary, but in the end they celebrate the capacity humans have for going beyond what would normally be thought of as possible, making our spirits, or at least mine, transcend the daily challenges and disappointments. Which I guess is the point.  

THIS ISSUE ALONE SHOULD GET YOU TO VOTE FOR OBAMA (UNLESS YOU AGREE WITH RUSH AND MITT)

Here's a series of posters I grabbed from the Internet that say it better than I could:

THE COLORADO BATMAN MOVIE MASSACRE

I haven't seen the new Batman movie yet and really have very little interest, despite some rave reviews. I read and heard and saw rave reviews of the last Batman, DARK KNIGHT, but was pretty sure I wouldn't dig it, and I didn't.  I saw it because my youngest son wanted to, and I wanted him to see it with someone who would have a more critical eye.

I wrote about it in a post back then, seeing some plot points as seeming justifications for the actions of the then administration's (Bush/Cheney) actions and policies. From what I hear about this latest flick, it too seems to have some rightwing over, or under, tones.  But as I have said in many posts, not just the one about the last Batman movie, and as my friend the great photographer Robert Zuckerman has said in many comments on this blog more succinctly and better, I believe these kinds of violent movies, even when clearly fantasy, contribute to the level of violence in our world.

Michael Moore made a point recently in his response to the Colorado movie theater massacre that Canadians have a lot of guns and watch pretty much the same movies and video games etc. we do and yet they, like all other industrialized nations, have only a tiny fraction of the gun deaths we have in this country. So it can't all be about gun control and culture. But nonetheless it is clear that the automatic weapons ban could have kept the massacre to fewer dead and wounded, and that our violent films and video games etc. coupled with our violent history and bias toward vigilantism etc. has contributed to a culture of less sensitivity toward brutality.

I mean just look at the way we went from the "Marcus of Queensbury" idea of rules for boxing to all out kicking and strangling etc. in the kind of fighting now more popular among boys and young men on TV. Yes, a boy from a stable home with a good upbringing and positive models for settling disputes through reasonable discussion etc. will most likely not massacre innocent people in a movie theater. And one who has had a psychotic break or some deepseated mental aberration that can lead to inhumane, let alone inhuman, behavior, may become violent without watching merciless brutality on a movie or TV or computer screen. But even in the latter cases, a sick person might opt for a less destructive weapon than automatic rifles and handguns.

Recently a woman was accosted by a mentally sick man on the street in Manhattan and sprayed with Mace and stabbed. She survived the stabbing thanks to a nurse among the passersby helping until an ambulance arrived, and the man was easily caught without harming anyone else. Imagine if rather than Manhattan with its tougher gun laws, he was somewhere where he had access to automatic weapons when that same destructive impulse to harm a stranger came upon him.

I worked in commercials in the 1990s. Not something I had planned to do, and I did my best to avoid doing commercials for products I thought contributed to the culture of violence (and refused to do voiceovers for violent video games which was a big income loss at the time). And one of the things I learned in doing that was how corporations spend billions on research into how to get people to respond the way they want them to through filmed commercials.

No corporation would spend that kind of money unless they got results. So for people to pretend that violence on movie and TV and computer screens doesn't impact people, especially young minds, and sick minds, and yet commercials on the same screens do, is disingenuous at best. I suppose I'll eventually see this flick when it's shown on TV. My youngest has already seen it with a friend and dug it. My take doesn't have as much of an impact as it used to. But he's capable of critical thinking and if and when I see it I'm sure we'll have a lively discussion, as my older boy and I used to about the same thing, only then the violence wasn't even as bad as it is now. (I remember how the first GODFATHER movie and CHINATOWN and THE WILD ONES and other 1970s movies that first introduced a level of realistic violence never before seen on screen upset me at the time, and now they seem so tame!)

So, my take is that if the killer of those theater goers in Colorado had not see DARK KNIGHT and Heath Ledger's impactful performance as the ruthlessly violent Joker and didn't have easy access to automatic weapons, those people in that Colorado theater that night, or at least more of them, would still be alive and unhospitalized.

MAYBE THE BIGGEST LIE

There's a lot of lies out there coming from the rightwing media and parroted by most Republican politicians, but maybe the biggest in some ways, or maybe I mean the one with the widest impact is the idea that the more money the rich have the better it is for the rest of us somehow. The "trickle down" economy that was discredited even in its heyday under Reagan.

It's no accident that the change in economic disparity and the diminishment of economic opportunity began to register in 1980, the year Reagan took office. We now trail every other advanced democracy in the world, our children have less opportunity to improve their lot economically and live with a greater disparity between rich and poor than any European kid, or Canadian, or etc.—something that would have been unthinkable in my childhood and even early adulthood.

The old "America" the right seems to have so much nostalgia for is often depicted as the "Happy Days" of the 1950s. And they're correct that the country was much better off than in many ways, mostly economically. But that was because unions were strong and all working people benefited from that because the threat of strikes kept corporate bosses wary of trying to cut wages etc. so a working-class family could actually afford a house and car and be able to put their kids through college on the wages of one adult.

And corporate greed was kept in check by progressive tax rates that were as high as they've ever been for the richest. And yet, the economy was booming, the country was in great shape, except for the treatment of minorities and women. Maybe that's what the rightwingers are really nostalgic for. But the truth is, the economic inequality that now exists in the USA is greater than anywhere in the advanced world, and even greater than in some developing countries. The only time it's been this bad was in the gilded age in the late 19th century when corporate bosses hadn't been brought into check by fairer work laws and anti-trust legislation etc.

The idea that rich people are "job creators" and the more money they have the better off we all are is a lie, plain and simple. Rich people didn't create the Internet which has led to a lot of the jobs in our economy, the government did. Et-endlessly-cetera. Maybe Will Rogers said it best back when we were heading into The Great Depression, an economic situation that was only matched by the one Bush/Cheney led us into. Fortunately Obama and his administration kept it from getting as bad as then, but not with any help from the right which includes most Republican politicians. But that's another post.

GREGORY PECK VS. JOHN WAYNE

It's kind of bogus to compare "artists" (in this case movie actors) especially ones so different.  But I watched a corny old Hollywood "swashbuckler" last night starring Gregory Peck called CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER and couldn't help thinking about the difference between Peck and John Wayne.

Wayne made a lot of movies I love and he did what he did well. Same for Peck, though Peck worked in more genres (Wayne was confined almost exclusively to Westerns and war movies, with a few exceptions, while Peck was in almost every genre except musicals).

They both played pretty much heroic men. In their private lives Wayne was a "conservative" and like many conservatives made a big deal of his patriotism but somehow never served in the military even when many others in Hollywood did during World War Two. Peck was a "liberal" but also didn't serve during that war due to a back injury from dance classes when he was young, though the studio said it was an athletic injury since dance didn't sound very macho (you can sometimes see when he's moving fast in a film that his walk seems stiff and awkward). Wayne got out of serving under other circumstances, the issue's been interpreted in various ways depending on the politics of the person doing the judging.

But the fact is both were big men (a few inches over six feet, back when that was rare) and charismatic on screen.  But Peck looked like "the tall dark and handsome" hero of popular myth in those days, Wayne looked more like an everyman, just bigger.

Wayne's best role, for my taste, was as the ex-boxer in John Ford's THE QUIET MAN, a film I can watch anytime and enjoy and an exception to the usual Western or war movie. Peck's best is usually considered TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, and I agree. Obviously the latter was a more serious movie that had a bigger impact on peoples consciousness. But the roles the actors play in them kind of summarize my feelings about them.

Wayne is someone I often enjoy watching perform, and as a boy I sometimes fantasized being as heroic as the characters he played, but never wanted to be them, or him. Peck, on the other hand, played characters I wished I could be not just as heroic as, but as dignified and as quietly and gracefully courageous as.  That's really the difference I was thinking about last night. Even in a film as flimsy as CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER, Peck projected an inner conviction and self-respect, and that dignified manner, that made me wish I was like the men he often portrayed.

I never met Wayne. He was dead by the time I got to Hollywood I think. I like watching many of his flicks and I've long stopped judging him for his misplaced political inclinations, but in the end he's just an entertainer who created a character—"the duke"—that he played well. But I did meet Gregory Peck and wasn't disappointed. He came across, even in his later years, as a really decent human being. I feel honored to have had the chance to be around him the one time I was. And I feel honored by his presence in any movie I see him in.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK [FROM ME THIS TIME]

I found this in an old journal I was glancing through for archival reasons. It's from 7/13/74:

     "—sometimes
      I feel myself on the verge
       of expressing what hasnt
       been expressed since some
      prehistoric or at least ancient
    human wandered on the outside
    ('edges') of a cruel society
       (or a society which at least
        sometimes required cruelty)
   and knew he/she could not
     only live without that but
      could be 'happy and well'
      and even fulfilled!—"

[I did add a coda:      "only
      it never gets to be more
        than a 'feeling'
             an internal experience
                                         etc."]