It’s interesting that the mass media has suddenly become fascinated by “incivility”—i.e. the rudeness of some people in public, or rather public people in public.
All those angry mostly older white folks carrying signs depicting Obama as Hitler or the devil or accusing him of lying and wanting to brainwash their children etc. etc. etc., including the public figures on the right and in the Republican Party, and most of the focus has been on their anger and allowing them to voice it as if it’s righteous instead of self-righteous and either completely ignorant or totally misinformed (as I noticed last night on Anderson Cooper's show on CNN when some rightwing apologist was given what seemed like hours but was probably fifteen or twenty minutes to justify exactly that behavior, no apologies requested or given).
But now that we have three incidents that involve African-Americans, suddenly it’s all about “civility” which reminds me too much of old racist ideas about how African-Americans are less “civilized” than whites and therefore can be either treated like they’re “less civilized” (i.e. Congressman Wilson’s rude outburst during Obama’s speech the other night shouting “You lie!”) or are expected to behave “less civilized” i.e. reactions to Serena Williams’ outburst against the line judge who made a bad call and cost her the game and championship, or Kanye West’s rude grabbing of the microphone away from Taylor Swift when she was trying to give her acceptance speech for winning best female video for the MTV awards.
Many people I’m hearing in the media and reading on the net disagree that these incidents can be linked by “race” or racial issues, but how can you avoid it?
John MacEnroe himself, as a TV commentator for the match, criticized Serena Williams’ outburst! MacEnroe, who has made a living—since being a tennis champ who was constantly “uncivil”—as a character in commercials with the reputation of being capable of blowing up at any minute over any thing!
I remember when MacEnroe and Jimmy Connors were winning matches and mesmerizing but also confusing tennis fans with their rude outbursts against officials at their matches. It was embarrassing for many Irish-Americans at the time, because the WASP tennis champions of old (and even the rare non-WASPs and single African-American, Arthur Ashe) never exploded with vocal venom at their tennis matches.
So what gave MacEnroe the right to criticize Serena Williams for her outburst at what turned out to be a bad call (MacEnroe and Connors didn’t have the advantage of instant replay to verify their claims), she cursed, and threatened to shove the tennis ball down the judge’s throat.
Interestingly, the line judge was a diminutive Asian-American, who Williams towered over and who behaved as if she were genuinely frightened that Williams was going to physically attack her. Would she have felt the same way if a petite blond white tennis player had verbally attacked her or even threatened her? Did she really think Serena was going to physically attack her in front of an arena full of tennis fans and various tennis officials as well as police and guards all over the area? She acted as if she did.
Serena was wrong to lose control in such an obviously vitriolic way, but was it really worse than what MacEnroe and others have done in the past? I’ve certainly had outbursts like hers, though I’ve worked hard not to have them over the years.
If she were a Spanish or Russian or French player and had cursed in her native tongue would people be reacting as harshly against what she did? Isn’t part of the problem that it could be said that she swore in her own native tongue, i.e. “African-American”?
Or will I be accused of being a racist for saying that? I certainly have used the language she used and I’m not African-American. And plenty of white people I’ve known over the years have cursed in the same ways. But it’s usually not at tennis matches on national TV.
Joe Wilson cursed at President Obama (and I’m really getting tired of the media constantly referring to him as “Mister Obama”—how long do you think the right would let the media get away with that if it were Reagan or Bush?) in the language of white Southerners or macho white male culture in general in this country.
What was the worst thing a cowboy could call another cowboy in the old Westerns, or a man could call a Southern gentleman in the Hollywood fantasies of the old South—a liar. It meant there had to be a shootout or a duel. The honor of the one called a liar had to be defended to the death.
Wilson, a congressman from South Carolina—the last state to do away with segregation laws in my experience (when James Meredith was marching on Ole Miss and lunch counters were being forcefully integrated in Georgia, I was stationed in Greenville, South Carolina, where African-Americans were not allowed to even go to the local drive-in in their own cars or walk in the local park, which the city closed down rather than integrate, etc.), the state with the most fundamentalist Christian cults, the state where the right almost always triumphs— knows that “You lie” would be the same as yelling “You are a coward, a dog, an ingrate” and all the other insults famous from Hollywood’s version of Southern men with honor.
He also knew that he was yelling it at the president in a public forum and on television. He knew what he was doing and what impact he wanted it to have. That he would be seen as the champion of those who are having a difficult time accepting Obama as president, which obviously has a lot to do with Obama’s being partly African-American, because as much as the right hated Bill Clinton—the supposed “first black president”—they never questioned his legitimacy as having been elected president and they didn’t shout “You lie” when he addressed both houses of Congress with his own push for healthcare for all, they just tried everything they could to get him removed from office.
Can you imagine what the right would be doing if Obama were caught with a young white female intern in the oval office?! It’s obviously racial.
And Kanye West? My little guy wanted to watch some of the MTV awards before he went to bed so we actually caught West’s rude intrusion on Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech and both reacted critically to it. It was obviously rude and self-centered and self-indulgent etc. even if his point was that Beyonce deserved the award instead of Swift and he obviously thought he was standing up for Beyonce and that Swift could finish her speech after he gave back the mic, but she was either too distraught (the way the media is playing it) or, as my son and I saw, the director of the show got confused and interrupted her attempt to continue her acceptance speech with music (ala the Academy Awards when someone’s speech goes over the allotted time) and then with repeated starts, as though the reel was skipping, of a filmed interlude with Tracy Morgan and Eminem (a series of supposedly comic vignettes that also played on some racial stereotyping interestingly).
But would West’s behavior have garnered the same level of attention if it had been a fellow African-American performer he interrupted during their acceptance speech? Oh, wait a minute, he did that a few years ago and, hmmmmmm, it didn’t get almost any attention in the mass media.
My little guy has a crush on Taylor Swift, so that was part of his negative reaction to West’s rude behavior, but probably a lot of people have crushes on her—she’s a lovely looking blond young woman who comes across as super sweet and talented as a singer/songwriter—and the visual impact of the interruption was hard to miss, a very dark African-American male with patterns shaved into his very shortly cropped hair, dressed in black if I remember correctly with the stance and verbal thrust of a rapper, i.e. “gangsta” style (even though West is famous for being the more cerebral version of that stance) grabbing the microphone from this slim, pale-as-virgin-snow, teenage looking (I’m not sure if she’s finally twenty or not, my little guy says she is), blonde, wisp of a girl looking like a virginal prom queen of old, as opposed to the other female music stars at the awards who were mostly dressed like classy hookers or strip joint female crotch grabbing dancers, or drag queen ghouls (Lady Ga Ga) etc.
Though Beyonce looked pretty classy as usual and interestingly was exceptionally classy in turning over her later award (in another category) acceptance speech time to Swift, calling her out with an introduction in which Beyonce spoke about how she remembered being a seventeen (which is what I thought Swift’s age is) year old first time award winner and how much it meant to her. Interestingly (and I believe for racial reasons) Beyonce’s classy move did not seem to make the evening news or most of the mass media shows I checked in on. Hmmmmm.
I also watched Kanye West apologize on the new Jay Leno show last night and he seemed not only truthfully contrite but totally confused by the reaction to and by his own behavior, genuinely disturbed by it all. And why shouldn’t he be? This kind of behavior has been rewarded by audiences and CD buyers (predominantly white) since long before he started his career as a clean-cut young man who rapped to convince his fellow African-American young men, in particular, to take the higher road but then got off it himself to increase his street cred and sell more CDs, because that works.
It’s the trap of wanting the cake and eating it too. We can’t have a culture that glorifies old stereotypes (Southern gentlemen and their “honor” and their white virginal women—young urban black gangsters turning rudeness into millions—black athletes overcoming great odds to succeed in previously white dominated sports but not allowed to act out in the stereotypical supposed “black” manner, i.e. cursing and threatening to do mythical damage that is obviously meant to intimidate but is not really a threat, anymore than the fingers many of us flash in traffic when cut off by others is etc.) and gets past them at the same time.
Having Obama in the oval office seems to have allowed a lot of “Americans” to on the one hand believe we’ve crossed some barrier that will lead to racial harmony while others take it as an excuse to be openly racial without having to actually talk about race. But ain’t no way these three incidents didn’t pivot on racially based conceptions of accepted behavior in the arenas where they occurred.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
JIM CARROLL R.I.P.
[This is a personal take on the impact Jim Carroll had on me, including some self-aggrandizement on my part, but an attempt to be honest about it no matter how unflattering to me, or Carroll, who is remembered in many blogs and obituaries on the web as a gentle and sweet man as well as by many fans as a great poet who had a lasting and powerful impact on their lives.]
Like a lot of us who were alive and reading The Paris Review and various alternative or avant-garde little magazines back in the '60s and early '70s, I was a fan of Jim Carroll's poetry right from the start. And when excerpts from THE BASKETBALL DIARIES were first surfacing, I was impressed with his prose as well.
I was also critical. The excerpts from the diaries contained writing that was about as clear and concise as any out there at the time, and even more powerful. Mostly because it was so directly confessional while coming from the perspective and supposed experiences of a boy supposedly writing the diaries when he was 12 through 15.
I say "supposed" because at the time, knowing something about the people and places he was writing about, it was clear to me that a lot of it was written in retrospect and not at the time. That became even clearer as more and more of them appeared.
Everyone I knew who read any of them was knocked out by this kid creating such amazing documents about a life most people I knew had no experience of. Not just the working-class, Irish-American, Catholic family and neighborhood stuff, but the drugs and basketball prodigy realities so perfectly described and so dramatically controlled by one so young. The writing that is, not the drugs or the sport.
I also felt in competition with him as a fellow Irish-American poet writing about my own youth in a series of sonnets (which many critically found more prose than poetry when they first appeared) that were getting published in similar venues. Not that they were that much alike, but I had a bad habit of thinking everyone was ripping me off in those days, and for too many years afterward.
But I had to admire Carroll's writing, no matter how much I protested that the diaries were written when he was older and contained too many mistakes—one I remember (though I haven't read it in years so may be a little off on the exact date) has a Bob Dylan song on a juke box in an Irish bar in the Bronx in 1963! Or '64 at the latest. A reality that was impossible for all kinds of reasons, unless the bar wasn't the one he cited, or the date was a few years later, or etc.
When the diaries were finally published as a book by the small Bolinas, California, press Tombouctou in 1978 (I still have my first edition copy), Carroll confirmed my doubts by writing in a small preface that: "they are as much fiction as biography." That removed any need for me to criticize them any longer and I went on to praise them in conversations, classrooms I was teaching in at the time, and in reviews and essays.
His first big collection of poems, LIVING AT THE MOVIES, came out in '73 from a bigger, New York publisher, Grossman (I still have that book too) and placed him firmly in the second generation "New York School" that included, and in many ways was led by, Ted Berrigan. Berrigan was a good friend and mentor to Carroll. Ted was also a good friend of mine, and when Carroll—under the influence of the poet Patti Smith (who had begun fronting her own rock band and was becoming much more famous and financially successful as a result)—decided to front his own band, one of his first songs to have an impact and become a hit of sorts was "People Who Died"—which anyone who knew Ted Berrigan's work knew was the title of one of Ted's more famous poems at the time.
It angered me, in my fears of being ripped off myself, that this younger poet who Ted treated so well would go out and make money off an idea Ted had first. Even though with any kind of afterthought it must have been obvious to me that Ted didn't invent the idea of writing a poem about friends—or people whose work you admired—who had died. And as always, Ted was generous and gracious about it, convincing me that he was delighted that Jim had not only done it but that it had helped make Jim famous for a while as a "rock star."
Not long after that, Carroll gave a reading at St. Mark's to a standing room only crowd who had come to see the rock star read, and he chose to read some incredibly mean-spirited, childishly tantrum-like tirades against his family and the Irish-Americans he came from in general. At least as I heard it sitting in the reading. Now I had a new bone to pick with him, and made it clear at the reading and to anyone who would listen to what I see now was my own self-righteousness and envy (though at the time it felt like what a lot of my African-American friends had expressed they felt over "black" writers airing the dirty laundry of their families or blaming them for things they were sometimes just victims of, or Jewish friends who felt the same way about similar writing from their ethnic standpoint [and even though I was known for my own sometimes violently angry poetry]).
Not long after I got involved in the movie business (something I got a lot of flack for on the alternative press scene, as "selling out") Leo DiCaprio portrayed the main character (i.e. Jim) in the movie adaptation of THE BASKETBALL DIARIES. And once again I was upset, not with Jim this time, but with Hollywood for not making clear that this was not reality but art (though some saw the movie as a successful art film) and for not emphasizing the role of poetry and literature in elevating the main character's life to more than just another urban drugs & violence exploitation flick. [I felt so strongly about this because as I always said, and still say, "poetry saved my life"—and Carroll wrote something similar about himself, only more poetically articulated].
Eventually I got over all my problems with Carroll and his work—while never denying how much I dug much of it—and over the following years went out of my way to attend some readings he gave where the crowds were much smaller and he seemed much less angry and confrontational (as did I). And I ran into him at parties, though we rarely did much more than nod to each other.
One time, when I was still living in L.A., a poet friend was hosting a big "spoken word" event back in New York that Sony was sponsoring at a time when CDs were new and some record companies thought they could exploit the then recent explosion of live poetry readings (another thing I thought at the time I deserved some credit for, having started a weekly reading series in L.A. that attracted some movie stars and therefore got worldwide publicity, initially flattering but eventually dismissive—"brat pack wannabe Whitmans" was one of the phrases thrown out by either Time or Newsweek—but before which there was almost no attention being paid to poetry (The L.A. Times had made the decision to even stop reviewing poetry books!) and almost no venues anymore outside academia (with a few exceptions like St. Mark's or The Nuyorican cafe in NYC) where it was being read, and within months of the enormous wave of publicity for this series I started with the poet Eve Brandstein, there were coffee houses opening all over L.A. and other cities and towns with homegrown poets reading and/or performing their work, as well as movies with poetry as the subject matter or part of it, or poets as characters in them (several named Michael).
Anyway, my friend introduces himself backstage to Jim Carroll and says he's amazed they hadn't met after all these years, especially since they shared a mutual friend, me, and, according to my friend, Carroll said he wasn't really a friend of mine and didn't really know me but he had "stolen" a few things from my poetry. My friend said he was smiling when he said it. That made me smile when I heard it, my envy and need for credit having thankfully left me by then.
The last time I saw Jim Carroll was at a party in the city several years ago where once again we caught each other's eye and nodded, but this time I saw something in his eyes that gave me the sense of a trapped animal, and I thought later that maybe he felt trapped by his past, his reputation, his earlier fame and notoriety and achievements. Maybe that's a stretch to second guess the mind of another, and maybe I was thinking of some of my own experiences, but I can see the look in his eyes right now.
Jim was a memorable guy, his physical presence (his eyes were pretty stunning when they caught you in their glare and he was always so thin it made him seem taller than he already was), his style (he was a dandy of sorts, especially early in his life and career when he was taken up by the older New York poets and artists, and from my perspective exploited by some, from what I heard some used him almost like a doll or toy to dress up for their own entertainment) and his intensity, especially in the writing in THE BASKETBALL DIARIES.
That book has become a classic, an alternative one maybe, like another poetic prodigy, Rimbaud's THE DRUNKEN BOAT, but one that will be read for generations to come. At least I hope so. I wouldn't want the only impact of Carroll's to be the movie made from it, with all it's Hollywood glamorization of addiction and violent fantasies.
I realize this remembrance has been partially presumptuous and doesn't necessarily throw a great light on the workings of my mind over the years, but I'd hate to remember Jim Carroll with fake sentiments and dishonest praise. The guy could write and was a genuine prodigy no matter how fictionalized the diaries were. Even if he did them in retrospect to some extent, or revised them later, he was still a teenager when they first began appearing, still in his twenties when the book came out, and their impact was immediate, sensational as it was. And the only feeling I have for him now is compassion. I hope his life was peaceful and fulfilling these recent years, and that he was at peace with himself and his past.
[For a maybe more objective and loving remembrance of Jim, click here to see Tom Clark's poetry blog today.]
Like a lot of us who were alive and reading The Paris Review and various alternative or avant-garde little magazines back in the '60s and early '70s, I was a fan of Jim Carroll's poetry right from the start. And when excerpts from THE BASKETBALL DIARIES were first surfacing, I was impressed with his prose as well.
I was also critical. The excerpts from the diaries contained writing that was about as clear and concise as any out there at the time, and even more powerful. Mostly because it was so directly confessional while coming from the perspective and supposed experiences of a boy supposedly writing the diaries when he was 12 through 15.
I say "supposed" because at the time, knowing something about the people and places he was writing about, it was clear to me that a lot of it was written in retrospect and not at the time. That became even clearer as more and more of them appeared.
Everyone I knew who read any of them was knocked out by this kid creating such amazing documents about a life most people I knew had no experience of. Not just the working-class, Irish-American, Catholic family and neighborhood stuff, but the drugs and basketball prodigy realities so perfectly described and so dramatically controlled by one so young. The writing that is, not the drugs or the sport.
I also felt in competition with him as a fellow Irish-American poet writing about my own youth in a series of sonnets (which many critically found more prose than poetry when they first appeared) that were getting published in similar venues. Not that they were that much alike, but I had a bad habit of thinking everyone was ripping me off in those days, and for too many years afterward.
But I had to admire Carroll's writing, no matter how much I protested that the diaries were written when he was older and contained too many mistakes—one I remember (though I haven't read it in years so may be a little off on the exact date) has a Bob Dylan song on a juke box in an Irish bar in the Bronx in 1963! Or '64 at the latest. A reality that was impossible for all kinds of reasons, unless the bar wasn't the one he cited, or the date was a few years later, or etc.
When the diaries were finally published as a book by the small Bolinas, California, press Tombouctou in 1978 (I still have my first edition copy), Carroll confirmed my doubts by writing in a small preface that: "they are as much fiction as biography." That removed any need for me to criticize them any longer and I went on to praise them in conversations, classrooms I was teaching in at the time, and in reviews and essays.
His first big collection of poems, LIVING AT THE MOVIES, came out in '73 from a bigger, New York publisher, Grossman (I still have that book too) and placed him firmly in the second generation "New York School" that included, and in many ways was led by, Ted Berrigan. Berrigan was a good friend and mentor to Carroll. Ted was also a good friend of mine, and when Carroll—under the influence of the poet Patti Smith (who had begun fronting her own rock band and was becoming much more famous and financially successful as a result)—decided to front his own band, one of his first songs to have an impact and become a hit of sorts was "People Who Died"—which anyone who knew Ted Berrigan's work knew was the title of one of Ted's more famous poems at the time.
It angered me, in my fears of being ripped off myself, that this younger poet who Ted treated so well would go out and make money off an idea Ted had first. Even though with any kind of afterthought it must have been obvious to me that Ted didn't invent the idea of writing a poem about friends—or people whose work you admired—who had died. And as always, Ted was generous and gracious about it, convincing me that he was delighted that Jim had not only done it but that it had helped make Jim famous for a while as a "rock star."
Not long after that, Carroll gave a reading at St. Mark's to a standing room only crowd who had come to see the rock star read, and he chose to read some incredibly mean-spirited, childishly tantrum-like tirades against his family and the Irish-Americans he came from in general. At least as I heard it sitting in the reading. Now I had a new bone to pick with him, and made it clear at the reading and to anyone who would listen to what I see now was my own self-righteousness and envy (though at the time it felt like what a lot of my African-American friends had expressed they felt over "black" writers airing the dirty laundry of their families or blaming them for things they were sometimes just victims of, or Jewish friends who felt the same way about similar writing from their ethnic standpoint [and even though I was known for my own sometimes violently angry poetry]).
Not long after I got involved in the movie business (something I got a lot of flack for on the alternative press scene, as "selling out") Leo DiCaprio portrayed the main character (i.e. Jim) in the movie adaptation of THE BASKETBALL DIARIES. And once again I was upset, not with Jim this time, but with Hollywood for not making clear that this was not reality but art (though some saw the movie as a successful art film) and for not emphasizing the role of poetry and literature in elevating the main character's life to more than just another urban drugs & violence exploitation flick. [I felt so strongly about this because as I always said, and still say, "poetry saved my life"—and Carroll wrote something similar about himself, only more poetically articulated].
Eventually I got over all my problems with Carroll and his work—while never denying how much I dug much of it—and over the following years went out of my way to attend some readings he gave where the crowds were much smaller and he seemed much less angry and confrontational (as did I). And I ran into him at parties, though we rarely did much more than nod to each other.
One time, when I was still living in L.A., a poet friend was hosting a big "spoken word" event back in New York that Sony was sponsoring at a time when CDs were new and some record companies thought they could exploit the then recent explosion of live poetry readings (another thing I thought at the time I deserved some credit for, having started a weekly reading series in L.A. that attracted some movie stars and therefore got worldwide publicity, initially flattering but eventually dismissive—"brat pack wannabe Whitmans" was one of the phrases thrown out by either Time or Newsweek—but before which there was almost no attention being paid to poetry (The L.A. Times had made the decision to even stop reviewing poetry books!) and almost no venues anymore outside academia (with a few exceptions like St. Mark's or The Nuyorican cafe in NYC) where it was being read, and within months of the enormous wave of publicity for this series I started with the poet Eve Brandstein, there were coffee houses opening all over L.A. and other cities and towns with homegrown poets reading and/or performing their work, as well as movies with poetry as the subject matter or part of it, or poets as characters in them (several named Michael).
Anyway, my friend introduces himself backstage to Jim Carroll and says he's amazed they hadn't met after all these years, especially since they shared a mutual friend, me, and, according to my friend, Carroll said he wasn't really a friend of mine and didn't really know me but he had "stolen" a few things from my poetry. My friend said he was smiling when he said it. That made me smile when I heard it, my envy and need for credit having thankfully left me by then.
The last time I saw Jim Carroll was at a party in the city several years ago where once again we caught each other's eye and nodded, but this time I saw something in his eyes that gave me the sense of a trapped animal, and I thought later that maybe he felt trapped by his past, his reputation, his earlier fame and notoriety and achievements. Maybe that's a stretch to second guess the mind of another, and maybe I was thinking of some of my own experiences, but I can see the look in his eyes right now.
Jim was a memorable guy, his physical presence (his eyes were pretty stunning when they caught you in their glare and he was always so thin it made him seem taller than he already was), his style (he was a dandy of sorts, especially early in his life and career when he was taken up by the older New York poets and artists, and from my perspective exploited by some, from what I heard some used him almost like a doll or toy to dress up for their own entertainment) and his intensity, especially in the writing in THE BASKETBALL DIARIES.
That book has become a classic, an alternative one maybe, like another poetic prodigy, Rimbaud's THE DRUNKEN BOAT, but one that will be read for generations to come. At least I hope so. I wouldn't want the only impact of Carroll's to be the movie made from it, with all it's Hollywood glamorization of addiction and violent fantasies.
I realize this remembrance has been partially presumptuous and doesn't necessarily throw a great light on the workings of my mind over the years, but I'd hate to remember Jim Carroll with fake sentiments and dishonest praise. The guy could write and was a genuine prodigy no matter how fictionalized the diaries were. Even if he did them in retrospect to some extent, or revised them later, he was still a teenager when they first began appearing, still in his twenties when the book came out, and their impact was immediate, sensational as it was. And the only feeling I have for him now is compassion. I hope his life was peaceful and fulfilling these recent years, and that he was at peace with himself and his past.
[For a maybe more objective and loving remembrance of Jim, click here to see Tom Clark's poetry blog today.]
Saturday, September 12, 2009
SOME FAVORITE PERFORMANCES IN COMEDIES
Caught a bit of MY COUSIN VINNY the other night and was once again knocked out by Marisa Tomei’s performance (as I am by everything she’s done).
It brought up memories of how she won the Oscar for that performance and the rumor started immediately that Jack Palance, who didn’t have his glasses so couldn’t read the Oscar card in the envelope looked up instead at the prompter and read the last name of the last nomonee which happened to be Tomei.
The Academy refuted the rumor but it still spread and poor Tomei became the scapegoat for the generally consistent resistance to give a comic performance, or even a serious performance in a comedy, it’s due, epecially in the form of an Oscar (Kevin Kline is one of the other few exceptions to that generalization, and lately there’s been more, like the nominations for JUNO and LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, which is why none of the above are on the list).
When I was falling asleep last night up here in the Berkshires (where a few trees are beginning to turn colors already) I thought about that and then started thinking of other performances in comedies I think make some movies worth watching.
So here’s the alphabet list I came up with before snoozing:
APPLEGATE, CHRISTINA in DON’T TELL MOM THE BABYSITTER’S DEAD
BYNES, AMANDA in HAIRSPRAY
CUSACK, JOHN in GROSSE POINT BLANK
DANIELS, JEFF in THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO
ELWES, CARY in PRINCESS BRIDE
FRANCO, JAMES in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS
GLOVER, CRISPIN in BACK TO THE FUTURE
HAYES, ROBERT (and JULIE HEGERTY) in AIRPLANE!
I?
JOHANSSON, SCARLETT in VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA
KINNEAR, GREG in GHOST TOWN
LOHAN, LINDSAY in MEAN GIRLS
MACEY, WILLIAM H. in WILD HOGS
NIELSEN, LESLIE in NAKED GUN
O’CONNOR, DONALD in SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
PENN, SEAN in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH
QUINN, ANTHONY in A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
RUDD, PAUL in CLUELESS
SEGAL, JASON in I LOVE YOU MAN
TRAVOLTA, JOHN in HAIRSPRAY
U?
VAUGHN, VINCE in WEDDING CRASHERS
WOOD, EVAN RACHEL in WHATEVER WORKS
X?
YOUNG, SEAN in STRIPES
Z?
It brought up memories of how she won the Oscar for that performance and the rumor started immediately that Jack Palance, who didn’t have his glasses so couldn’t read the Oscar card in the envelope looked up instead at the prompter and read the last name of the last nomonee which happened to be Tomei.
The Academy refuted the rumor but it still spread and poor Tomei became the scapegoat for the generally consistent resistance to give a comic performance, or even a serious performance in a comedy, it’s due, epecially in the form of an Oscar (Kevin Kline is one of the other few exceptions to that generalization, and lately there’s been more, like the nominations for JUNO and LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, which is why none of the above are on the list).
When I was falling asleep last night up here in the Berkshires (where a few trees are beginning to turn colors already) I thought about that and then started thinking of other performances in comedies I think make some movies worth watching.
So here’s the alphabet list I came up with before snoozing:
APPLEGATE, CHRISTINA in DON’T TELL MOM THE BABYSITTER’S DEAD
BYNES, AMANDA in HAIRSPRAY
CUSACK, JOHN in GROSSE POINT BLANK
DANIELS, JEFF in THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO
ELWES, CARY in PRINCESS BRIDE
FRANCO, JAMES in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS
GLOVER, CRISPIN in BACK TO THE FUTURE
HAYES, ROBERT (and JULIE HEGERTY) in AIRPLANE!
I?
JOHANSSON, SCARLETT in VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA
KINNEAR, GREG in GHOST TOWN
LOHAN, LINDSAY in MEAN GIRLS
MACEY, WILLIAM H. in WILD HOGS
NIELSEN, LESLIE in NAKED GUN
O’CONNOR, DONALD in SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
PENN, SEAN in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH
QUINN, ANTHONY in A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
RUDD, PAUL in CLUELESS
SEGAL, JASON in I LOVE YOU MAN
TRAVOLTA, JOHN in HAIRSPRAY
U?
VAUGHN, VINCE in WEDDING CRASHERS
WOOD, EVAN RACHEL in WHATEVER WORKS
X?
YOUNG, SEAN in STRIPES
Z?
Friday, September 11, 2009
MORE RIGHTWING PARANOIA
Up in the "'Shire" for the weekend after a long rainy drive. But here's a link to commemorate what the ringtwing does to he seriousness of this day and its meaning for those who lost loved ones to the attack. (I only lost friends, not family.)
Thursday, September 10, 2009
ANOTHER GREAT SPEECH
Well, if anyone with any objectivity watched Obama's speech last night to Congress, I can't see how they couldn't have been impressed.
He answered all his critics, refuted all the main lies from the right, brought home all the major reasons why healthcare reform is necessary and necessary now, and wrapped it up with a very pointed and poignant argument for healthcare reform representing the best in us.
He did it forcefully, honestly, and about as conversationally as a speech to Congress has ever been. So no one could misconstrue anything he said.
Unfortunately, I suspect the rightwing nuts and the vulnerably uninformed they arouse with their lies and hate mongering tactics weren't watching and instead will get their propagandists' deliberately distorted interpretation. Hopefully, the speech will at least cause the media to give more weight to what the president represents, which is still a majority of the country, and less to what the rightwing nuts represent, which is a miniscule percentage of the population that will always be unwilling to see any Democrat, much less a mixed race one with a funny name, as anything other than suspicious.
[It was almost funny to watch the Republicans try to figure out when to sit in stony silence with sour looks on their faces and when to stand and applaud. One of the funniest was when Obama made a statement about holding insurance companies accountable and the Dems stood and cheered and the Republicans sat stonily looking sour until one of them figured out how that might look and stood and then others looked around and got it and before long they were standing and cheering too. Woops. Almost got caught out there Pubbies.]
He answered all his critics, refuted all the main lies from the right, brought home all the major reasons why healthcare reform is necessary and necessary now, and wrapped it up with a very pointed and poignant argument for healthcare reform representing the best in us.
He did it forcefully, honestly, and about as conversationally as a speech to Congress has ever been. So no one could misconstrue anything he said.
Unfortunately, I suspect the rightwing nuts and the vulnerably uninformed they arouse with their lies and hate mongering tactics weren't watching and instead will get their propagandists' deliberately distorted interpretation. Hopefully, the speech will at least cause the media to give more weight to what the president represents, which is still a majority of the country, and less to what the rightwing nuts represent, which is a miniscule percentage of the population that will always be unwilling to see any Democrat, much less a mixed race one with a funny name, as anything other than suspicious.
[It was almost funny to watch the Republicans try to figure out when to sit in stony silence with sour looks on their faces and when to stand and applaud. One of the funniest was when Obama made a statement about holding insurance companies accountable and the Dems stood and cheered and the Republicans sat stonily looking sour until one of them figured out how that might look and stood and then others looked around and got it and before long they were standing and cheering too. Woops. Almost got caught out there Pubbies.]
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
THE RIGHTWING CONTROLLED MAINSTREAM MEDIA
I mean, why otherwise would the mainstream media give so much attention to extreme rightwing fringe lies and fantasies.
The excuse is that the news thrives on "controversy." They kept referring to Obama's speech to school children as "controversial" and his attempt to reform our healthcare system as "controversial." No. The war in Iraq was controversial. More people demonstrated against it around the world than ever before demonstrated against anything in history.
But they were hardly covered by the media until the tide of public opinion turned and could no longer be denied. Yet a very tiny minority with paranoid fears about Obama infecting their children's minds and turning them into mind controlled robots has to not only be covered but become the main story of the week, while a huge majority of parents polled had no objection to Obama addressing school children as Reagan and Bush Sr. and other former presidents have.
I hated Reagan's agenda: the breaking of unions so working families could no longer afford college for their children or even a home without both parents working and maybe even each working two jobs etc. He created the whole "homeless" problem. What used to be a few "hoboes" and such before Reagan, under Reagan became entire families living in their cars etc. And so much more (the use of torture in the whole Central American debacle, as has recently come out in the released CIA papers).
But there was no outcry from the left against Reagan speaking to schoolchildren, even though he pushed his rightwing agenda and fantasy version of reality. There was no outcry about Bush Sr. boring them to death. But a man who overcame great odds, unlike the Bushes or even Reagan for that matter, to accomplish incredible educational achievements and even become president, an example to all our kids of how perseverance and commitment and hard work can help you rise above the obstacles life throws in your way, no, that's too much for children to hear.
The story should have been to investigate the sources of these objections (false rumors and lies etc. from the usual rightwing suspects). But nope.
Not even to mention the stories being ignored by the media while this nonsense goes on. Here's three that I haven't seen mentioned and which are more important than anything else the media is wasting time on lately:
1. Water. There's a great documentary I caught on the Sundance channel the other night (called FLOW) about how several major corporations are basically taking control of the world's fresh water and selling it back to us while degrading and destroying the environment. It's heartbreaking. And it's been in the works for a while, as many of us know and have already written about. Internationals like Vivendi and Suez, American corporations like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle's. All of them finding the sources of fresh water, whether in Michigan, India, Africa, etc. They end up digging wells so deep they deplete the local sources of fresh water and then they pollute what's left with the waste from their water treatment and bottling facilities etc. impoverishing what were once thriving rural communities. And they've gotten together and formed some kind of world water counsel to set the rules, in which all the main players have major stakes in these corporations! They'd bottle air if they could and make us pay to breathe.
2. Just one year ago the world economy had broken down so thoroughly, most economists were predicting the worst economic downturn since The Great Depression with the subsequent consequences. Now, most economists agree that the steps taken by especially the Obama administration with the stimulus package and the saving of several financial institutions (the Bush attempt is a little more iffy since the results cannot be calculated because much of the money they handed out is unaccounted for at this point). What was an unemployment rate above 25% in the Depression, has been kept below 10% so far, and even if it goes to the expected 10%, it will still be a miraculous turn around given the circumstances just twelve months ago. Had McCain been elected and allowed to do what he was suggesting at the time, there is no doubt things would be so much worse everyone would recognize what we have now as a blessing in comparison. Let alone if the last administration was still around. They're the jokers that created the mess in the first place.
3. Oh and speaking of the above, has anyone seen the media cover the story that the U. S. treasury has "turned a profit of some $4 billion from eight large banks that have settled their debts—an annualized return of about 15%—and payments from other companies could add billions more" (according to Time). 15% in this economic climate! You might find this stuff in print or on the web, but on the mainstream TV news shows, nothing. Barely a squeak, but they go on and on about the current "controversy" made up entirely by rightwing propagandists who strategize this stuff into existence solely for the purpose of destroying Obama's presidency and returning the Congress to Republicans so they can do what they did the last time they were in charge: lead us into unnecessary wars and death and destruction (including of our reputation) and the almost total annihilation of the economy (not just here but worldwide!), not to mention torture, invasion of privacy, and complete corporate takeover of the government (and yes I know that even with Democrats in power, though not with an unbeatable majority, corporate power still rules much of DC, but already a lot of the excesses from the previous eight years have been reversed by Presidential orders and new legislation).
The excuse is that the news thrives on "controversy." They kept referring to Obama's speech to school children as "controversial" and his attempt to reform our healthcare system as "controversial." No. The war in Iraq was controversial. More people demonstrated against it around the world than ever before demonstrated against anything in history.
But they were hardly covered by the media until the tide of public opinion turned and could no longer be denied. Yet a very tiny minority with paranoid fears about Obama infecting their children's minds and turning them into mind controlled robots has to not only be covered but become the main story of the week, while a huge majority of parents polled had no objection to Obama addressing school children as Reagan and Bush Sr. and other former presidents have.
I hated Reagan's agenda: the breaking of unions so working families could no longer afford college for their children or even a home without both parents working and maybe even each working two jobs etc. He created the whole "homeless" problem. What used to be a few "hoboes" and such before Reagan, under Reagan became entire families living in their cars etc. And so much more (the use of torture in the whole Central American debacle, as has recently come out in the released CIA papers).
But there was no outcry from the left against Reagan speaking to schoolchildren, even though he pushed his rightwing agenda and fantasy version of reality. There was no outcry about Bush Sr. boring them to death. But a man who overcame great odds, unlike the Bushes or even Reagan for that matter, to accomplish incredible educational achievements and even become president, an example to all our kids of how perseverance and commitment and hard work can help you rise above the obstacles life throws in your way, no, that's too much for children to hear.
The story should have been to investigate the sources of these objections (false rumors and lies etc. from the usual rightwing suspects). But nope.
Not even to mention the stories being ignored by the media while this nonsense goes on. Here's three that I haven't seen mentioned and which are more important than anything else the media is wasting time on lately:
1. Water. There's a great documentary I caught on the Sundance channel the other night (called FLOW) about how several major corporations are basically taking control of the world's fresh water and selling it back to us while degrading and destroying the environment. It's heartbreaking. And it's been in the works for a while, as many of us know and have already written about. Internationals like Vivendi and Suez, American corporations like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle's. All of them finding the sources of fresh water, whether in Michigan, India, Africa, etc. They end up digging wells so deep they deplete the local sources of fresh water and then they pollute what's left with the waste from their water treatment and bottling facilities etc. impoverishing what were once thriving rural communities. And they've gotten together and formed some kind of world water counsel to set the rules, in which all the main players have major stakes in these corporations! They'd bottle air if they could and make us pay to breathe.
2. Just one year ago the world economy had broken down so thoroughly, most economists were predicting the worst economic downturn since The Great Depression with the subsequent consequences. Now, most economists agree that the steps taken by especially the Obama administration with the stimulus package and the saving of several financial institutions (the Bush attempt is a little more iffy since the results cannot be calculated because much of the money they handed out is unaccounted for at this point). What was an unemployment rate above 25% in the Depression, has been kept below 10% so far, and even if it goes to the expected 10%, it will still be a miraculous turn around given the circumstances just twelve months ago. Had McCain been elected and allowed to do what he was suggesting at the time, there is no doubt things would be so much worse everyone would recognize what we have now as a blessing in comparison. Let alone if the last administration was still around. They're the jokers that created the mess in the first place.
3. Oh and speaking of the above, has anyone seen the media cover the story that the U. S. treasury has "turned a profit of some $4 billion from eight large banks that have settled their debts—an annualized return of about 15%—and payments from other companies could add billions more" (according to Time). 15% in this economic climate! You might find this stuff in print or on the web, but on the mainstream TV news shows, nothing. Barely a squeak, but they go on and on about the current "controversy" made up entirely by rightwing propagandists who strategize this stuff into existence solely for the purpose of destroying Obama's presidency and returning the Congress to Republicans so they can do what they did the last time they were in charge: lead us into unnecessary wars and death and destruction (including of our reputation) and the almost total annihilation of the economy (not just here but worldwide!), not to mention torture, invasion of privacy, and complete corporate takeover of the government (and yes I know that even with Democrats in power, though not with an unbeatable majority, corporate power still rules much of DC, but already a lot of the excesses from the previous eight years have been reversed by Presidential orders and new legislation).
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
ELECTRIC LITERATURE
Got the first issue of a new literary magazine in the mail a while ago. It's called ELECTRIC LITERATURE. This first issue contains five works of short fiction, some of which seem to be parts of novels.
The writers are all well established and I've read some of their work before (in mags like The New Yorker). But I have to admit, reading these five pieces in succession over a period of weeks, or more, made the strengths of each and the differences between them not only more obvious, but more of a pleasure to experience.
Jim Shepard's "Your fate Hurtles Down at You" definitely reads like part of a novel and almost an academic exercise. It's set in the Alps in 1939, but ignores the significance of that year, the beginning of WWII when Germany invaded Poland etc. to focus on a group of unlikely scientists studying snow layers for some innovative scientific discoveries about avalanches and other snow related realities that have until then been relatively ignored.
The implications of the story—which is studied, descriptively precise, slow moving (is it too obvious to say almost "glacial" or just too much of an exaggeration but one that's hard to avoid)—touch ever so indirectly on some of the issues of the time and the greater issues (death of the planet compared to totalitarian genocide etc.) but so indirectly, even discretely, it's like a class in the old "close reading" method and may, as was often the case with that technique, be unintentional anyway.
But, it turned out to be a good set up for the other four pieces in it's unique perspective and novel like feeling. The story is resolved at the end in a way that felt like I'd just read a novel and not a short story or part of a novel. Which made moving on to Diana Wagman's "Three-Legged Dog" more satisfying in a way. It's definitely a short story, and the old fashioned kind I like with an arc that ends with a resolution that leaves me feeling like I wasn't wasting my time investing in these characters.
Unfortunately, or not, depending on your taste, it's another one of those contemporary stories in which the protagonist turns out to be a loser in the usual ways, too focused on himself to appreciate someone else's perspective, especially the person he most treasures, and so he can't help... You get it, but it's done so well, it made me interested anyway, especially in how Wagman was going to pull off the reversal.
"The Time Machine" by T Cooper hits a lot of those same familiar notes—first person story told by a needy, insecure, jealous, lover who can't help destroying what he has. This story is also told not just in the usual first person monologue way but using lists and emails etc. But it's so well done, I ended it feeling like I'd just had a satisfying reading experience. And from a fiction writer whose work I've read in The New Yorker where the stories generally leave me cold at the end, wondering why I bothered, because there never seems to be any resolution or more importantly any good reason (literary, story-wise, reality check-wise, etc.) why they don't. But this one did, and though maybe predictable, and ultimately disappointing, as a little reading vacation from my own reality, it worked.
Michael Cunningham's piece from a novel, OLYMPIA, was equally satisfying as a short fiction experience. I would like to read more about these characters. But the piece here was complete as is and surprised me again with how satisfying the experience was (yes, that Michael Cunningham, THE HOURS, etc.). It gets at a sibling relationship from the perspective of the unfortunate one whose parents like the other best, ala the old Smothers Brother routine, but just like them, the less charismatic (supposedly) less physically charismatic at least, it's the narrator who is really the one who controls the situation and our reactions to it (i.e. can anyone remember the handsomer Smothers brother's name?).
But the big brother with all the natural gifts is in the end an entirely engaging and memorable character, even if we've seen versions of him many times before. I know I'll never forget him. How many fictional characters can we say that of? Well, a lot for some of us, but all for good reason.
If Cunningham's piece had been the last one in the magazine, as I expected it to be actually, the whole mag would have been admirable, but predictable to some extent. It's Lydia Millet's "Sir Henry" that was not just unexpectedly satisfying, but the most unique of the bunch for my taste. The story of a professional dog walker (in Manhattan, mainly Central Park) and what that professionalism entails that makes him one of the highest priced ones, ended up being fascinating, a total surprise to me.
If you'd asked (or described the subject matter to me) I'd have said I'll pass. But that's one of the great things about exposing yourself, or at least myself, to the arts however they happen to enter my life—whether with or without any effort on my part—I'm often surprised, and those surprises are often pleasant ones. The magazine has gotten some illustrators and animators to make little films based on one line from each of these stories and the first one is from Wagman's and can be checked out here.
The main editor is Andy Hunter and he's done a good job. Though the mag isn't great as a work of art in itself—as some books can be—the design, typeface, and the cover art isn't all that original or satisfying for my taste. But that said, it's still full of some pretty great prose that I'm glad I got to read and am thankful to Hunter and his staff for sending it to me to check out. You might want to check it out yourself.
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