Category Archives: Americana

“Get Out” and the outsider

Americana, Film

Aloe plicata. -00290

We saw Get Out, the horror movie by the comedian Jordan Peele. I am not a horror movie fan or, more accurately, I didn’t think I was until I heard the genera explained on Terry Gross’ Fresh Air the day before the movie. Apparently, there are two species of horror films, the slasher in which some relentless force, like Freddy Kruger, is chasing the protagonist and movies in which the protagonist is sucked into what looks normal but seems slightly off. I want to add that a horror film must also have creepy music.

The second kind of film, the sucked in one, turns out to be the kind of film I really like. Rosemary’s Baby is one of my favorite movies and I have always chalked it up to  Roman Polanski, turns out that I just like horror movies (although Polanski did a great job). One of my favorite movies from last year was  10 Cloverfield Lane.

Get Out is stylish, witty, and great fun to watch. It also approaches race and racism in an eye-opening way and we saw it in a racially mixed, packed theater. As an aside, when I say racially mixed, I really mean a higher than usual proportion of African-Americans. Silicon Valley is about 32% Asian, 26% Hispanic, 35% white and only 2% black and I think most of the 2% are former pro-ball players who are now investors. End aside. Peele, the director, is black and so is the protagonist and point of view of the movie – which, I  suspect, changed our usual theater demographic breakdown – but most of the actors in the movie, and the guys we are rooting against, are white.

Looking back at my headline, the hero being black is an integral part of the movie in that he is an outsider. Like all outsiders, he has outsider-radar and is seeing things that are slightly off but his desire to please, to be a good black man, keeps overriding his instincts (but, of course, not ours). The instincts, that are not reciprocal,  that any outsider, including women I suspect, must have about the insiders…if they are going to survive.

If you want to catch a movie that you will walk out of feeling great, I whole heartily recommend Get Out. If you want to stay home, try 10 Cloverfield Lane.

As an after thought, the movie is also funny at times and there was one scare, after which the audience clapped, in effect saying Nice, you got me! 

 

Blowing up mailboxes

Americana, Around home

Mail boxes-00286

When I was a kid, a teenager, we blew up a guy’s mailbox several times. I don’t remember the reason, if there was a reason, but it couldn’t have been much of one. But were just beginning to realize our powerlessness as teenagers, on allowances, in a world of rules not of our making.

A couple of years ago now, we were turning right onto 4th Street in San Francisco and a homeless man cut across the street in front of us. He walked as slow as possible, just dawdling across the street while, eventually, four lanes of traffic were stopped, all of us watching him through angry eyes.

The New Yorker has an article about the White House Pressroom in the Trump era. Part of the article is about an infuriating a troll named Lucian Wintrich who is now an accredited reporter complete with a “make America Great Again” hat. According to the article, Wintrich blogs and posts posts like “BuzzFeed Admits Liberal ‘Fake News’ No Longer Works — Points To Gateway Pundits as  News Of Future” after BuzzFeed ran a story  accusing the GateWay Pundit, among other right-wing blogs, of using “alternate facts. Wintrich seems to be smart and he is surely smartass but he seems to be more interested in mocking the news rather than reporting it.

I think the three antidotes above have, as their common denominator, a theme of powerless men trying to exercise the only power they can muster.

Intelligence is not a virtue, it ia a measure of something else

Americana

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What an idiot. My first thought when hearing Trump’s scheme to add 10% to the military’s already bloated budget (last year’s military band budgets totaled $437 million dollars, for example, as compared to 148 million for the entire National Endowment for the Arts).

My second thought was How ironic, calling Trump is stupid is exactly what I’ve been ragging all my friends on for the last six months. Trump is not an idiot, he is smart, very smart. He is also an asshole and I think that is the problem. We Coastal Elites tend to think of reasonable behavior as a sign of high intelligence, and boorish behavior is a sign of low intelligence. It isn’t.

I’ve spent most of my life in the development business and successful bosses, guys who’ve gotten rich, who act boorishly are very common. A good case can be made that being insensitive to the wants and needs of others is a prerequisite for success in the development business (and unmannered and crude are merely tag alongs). 

 

 

 

I can’t help myself, I love Lyndon Johnson

Americana, Politics

smothers_brothers

Fifty years ago, the Smothers Brothers were the gutsiest show on television. By today’s standards, they were very mild but they were critical enough of President Lyndon Johnson that Johnson called William Paley, the head of CBS, to complain, leading to this story I heard on NPR.

“On their final show, Dick read a letter he and Tom had gotten from former President Johnson. These days, President Donald Trump responds to Saturday Night Live skits with angry tweets. Back then, former President Johnson, reflecting on his treatment by the Smothers Brothers, responded by writing: ‘It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.’”

 

Time to Volunteer

Americana, Politics

Bernie2

Donald J Trump is president of the United States of America. Even if you don’t like it, even if you are horrified, it is still true. What is also true, is that marches like The Woman’s March don’t change that and they won’t change Trump either. Bitching whether it is facebook, Twitter, a blog, or standing on a street corner,  doesn’t do anything but, temporarily, make the bitcher feel better.

I worked on the Obama campaign and went to a couple of Bernie Rallies plus I’ve complained a lot so I figured I had done all that was necessary but I was wrong. I am just beginning to understand what the Tea Party figured out years ago, that getting people in power, whose values match mine, is the only way to get the political result I want. Get involved. The easiest and fastest way to get people we want into power is in the swing districts of the House of Representatives. That is where this Trump insanity started and, if Progressives want to take back the house and end the insanity, we have to get involved. Here is a good place to start. 

Volunteer