2011_4_29 From the Sublime to the Ridiculous
I woke up at 2:45 last night to pee. When I got back in the recliner, where I have slept ever since I got out of the hospital on January 12, I tuned into NPR to hear some music to help me get back to sleep; but instead I got the BBC broadcast of the Royal Wedding, and William and Kate were just walking down the aisle at Westminster Cathedral. Curious, I got the remote and tuned in on the TV, and indeed, there they were, gliding through the nave. She was in a simple white dress, which I later found out was modeled on what Grace Kelly wore when she married her Prince. William was in a Royal uniform of red and black with spangled details befitting a Prince of the realm. Invited guests jammed the cathedral and tens of thousands were arrayed out side waiting for a glimpse of the fairy tale couple. It was a grand moment for the English monarchy, almost the kind that justifies their continued existence.
Only the Brits could pull off such a ravishing spectacle with a cast of thousands. I heard it said that the event was going to set back the Queen $11 million dollars, and that sounds accurate for all the actors and black horses and pomp and circumstance it called for. There were 60 cameras placed all over the cathedral, including some high in the rafters, which made everyone down below look like ants. Not even the Super Bowl had that many cameras. Stylistically, the event had elements of the 19th and 20th centuries, with smaller touches that went back in time even further; but the couple, who have gone together 9 years and that includes living together, seemed of the 21st century, which is why the crowds outside could identify with them, especially Kate who was a commoner. Of course you’d never know she was a commoner. She had amazing poise, grace, and absolutely stunning beauty. She acted as if she had been born to play this role and she had a sublime radiance as a bride that will win over the hearts and minds of the people. There is no doubt in my mind she will be the replacement for Dianna. William had impeccable luck to land her for his Queen.
In comic contrast there is Donald Trump, who has arrived on the electoral circuit like a train wreck. Man, is he a blowhard, an uber-cowboy who is going to face down all our adversaries with bombast and curse words. I heard part of a speech he gave last night in Las Vegas in front of a very conservative group and he dropped the F-bomb when referring to price of oil and gas. I read a piece in today’s Huffington Post that argues he is the logical outcome of latter day Republicanism, the result of devolution rather than evolution. He is a puff fish who has crawled out of the cosmic slime.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Toxic Mix
2011_4_28 Toxic Mix
The Republicans turned the tables again on the Democrats. Their gall and audacity is truly amazing. Today, the day after Obama’s press conference to release his full birth certificate and to remark about the “silliness” of the whole affair, which had gotten blown out of proportion by a “carnival barker,” the GOP slammed the president for indulging in a distraction to suck up media attention when he should be trying to solve our nation’s serious problems. It was like saying; you shoot baskets while Rome burns. Moreover they mocked his comment about having more important things to do than deal with trivial issues. So what did he do after the news conference? He flew to Chicago to be on the Oprah’s TV Show and to attend a fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Wow, did that invite ridicule. It made him look insincere and hypocritical. It is one more example of a Democrat shooting himself in the foot. He doesn’t need to feed the Spinmeisters of the GOP. So they were able to hit the ball back into Obama’s court, making Trump the courageous one and the president the court jester.
Then there was the other side of the coin: an editorial in the New York Times called “A Certificate of Embarrassment.” They saw Obama as the exemplary rational man trying to deal with irrational nonsense. But they felt it wasn’t necessary to genuflect to the purveyors of irrationality. They called it “a profound and debasing moment in American life.” They accurately bemoaned the fact he felt compelled to react to something with “heavy racial undertones.” And it is true that the second birth certificate won’t matter much because it won’t change anything on the Right. Today Sarah Palin called the birther issues still “fair game.” But the editorial did go to the heart of the matter with this summation of the affair.
“So it will not quiet most avid attackers. Several quickly questioned its authenticity. That’s because the birther question was never really about citizenship; it was simply a proxy for those who never really accepted the president’s legitimacy, for a toxic mix of reasons involving ideology, deep political anger and, most insidious of all, race.”
Toxic mix is right! The most extreme of the conservative Republicans are now constantly playing the race card through the vehicle of the birther issue. It all boils down to the effrontery of having an uppity black man as the leader of the nation. That fact is the new “white man’s burden, “ and it arouses that unrepentant racism still festering at the bottom of the American psyche. It is only Political Correctness that holds that angry demon in check. I’d guess anywhere from 20% to 40% of Americans are capable of exploding around this issue, with the right provocation or encouragement, especially in the South and other red states. By the time we get to late summer of 2012 passions will be running hot, especially if the economy is still limping along. If it looks like Obama might win again things could get dangerous.
The Republicans turned the tables again on the Democrats. Their gall and audacity is truly amazing. Today, the day after Obama’s press conference to release his full birth certificate and to remark about the “silliness” of the whole affair, which had gotten blown out of proportion by a “carnival barker,” the GOP slammed the president for indulging in a distraction to suck up media attention when he should be trying to solve our nation’s serious problems. It was like saying; you shoot baskets while Rome burns. Moreover they mocked his comment about having more important things to do than deal with trivial issues. So what did he do after the news conference? He flew to Chicago to be on the Oprah’s TV Show and to attend a fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Wow, did that invite ridicule. It made him look insincere and hypocritical. It is one more example of a Democrat shooting himself in the foot. He doesn’t need to feed the Spinmeisters of the GOP. So they were able to hit the ball back into Obama’s court, making Trump the courageous one and the president the court jester.
Then there was the other side of the coin: an editorial in the New York Times called “A Certificate of Embarrassment.” They saw Obama as the exemplary rational man trying to deal with irrational nonsense. But they felt it wasn’t necessary to genuflect to the purveyors of irrationality. They called it “a profound and debasing moment in American life.” They accurately bemoaned the fact he felt compelled to react to something with “heavy racial undertones.” And it is true that the second birth certificate won’t matter much because it won’t change anything on the Right. Today Sarah Palin called the birther issues still “fair game.” But the editorial did go to the heart of the matter with this summation of the affair.
“So it will not quiet most avid attackers. Several quickly questioned its authenticity. That’s because the birther question was never really about citizenship; it was simply a proxy for those who never really accepted the president’s legitimacy, for a toxic mix of reasons involving ideology, deep political anger and, most insidious of all, race.”
Toxic mix is right! The most extreme of the conservative Republicans are now constantly playing the race card through the vehicle of the birther issue. It all boils down to the effrontery of having an uppity black man as the leader of the nation. That fact is the new “white man’s burden, “ and it arouses that unrepentant racism still festering at the bottom of the American psyche. It is only Political Correctness that holds that angry demon in check. I’d guess anywhere from 20% to 40% of Americans are capable of exploding around this issue, with the right provocation or encouragement, especially in the South and other red states. By the time we get to late summer of 2012 passions will be running hot, especially if the economy is still limping along. If it looks like Obama might win again things could get dangerous.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
FACELESS KILLERS
2011-4-25 FACELESS KILLERS
Tonight I finished FACELESS KILLERS by Henning Mankell, an author from Sweden I got involver with long before I heard of Stieg Larsson and his MILLENNIUM TRILOGY. FACELESS KILLERS was published in Sweden in 1991 but it had to wait till 1997 to be translated into English and be published here. It was his first novel that featured Kurt Wallander, his earnest but anxiety-ridden detective, who has solved many cases through ten novels. PBS has done 4 “MYSTERY” programs based on the Wallander novels and more are on the way.
The killers in FACELESS KILLERS were two sets of criminals, one set was two thugs who were in Sweden as refugees from Eastern Europe who robbed, tortured and killed an elderly Swedish couple who lived on a farm, and the other set was another pair who killed a Somali immigrant as a political gesture. The murder of the Somali was solved first. The killers were affiliated with a number of right wing hate groups, although they committed this crime on their own hook. They were political fanatics, one being a retired policeman, who held Neo-Nazi anti-immigration views, which provided the motivation for their actions. They killed as a statement against the national policy on immigration. It was something personal with them. Wallander brought them to justice rather quickly. With the other two he had less to go on and it took months, but he finally, by following up a hunch, tracked them down. They had brutally murdered the farm couple. They were hard habitual criminals looking for scores in Sweden.
I thought it was interesting that Mankell was dealing with the same extremist right wing groups that obsessed Steig Larsson. Apparently, anyone left of center who had the public’s ear was honor-bond to warn them about these fascist wannabe zealots. Wallander was hardly a bleeding heart Liberal when it came to the immigration question; but on the other hand he was aghast at the execution-style murder of the Somali who was walking and minding his own business. He could not let an innocent person like the Somali, no matter how he got the spot were he died, pass without the guilty parties being found and punished.
Actually, Wallander is being retired. I have already bought THE TROUBLED MAN; it is in it that his travail ends. At the moment I don’t know how but I’ll find out soon.
He was pretty much a mess from the get-go. His wife Mona had left him and already had made a connection with another man, which pained him deeply. He was suffering terribly without her. He was drinking too much to meet other women. He was estranged from his daughter Linda who was living with a black man, which made him somewhat uncomfortable. Near the end of the book he does improve the relation a bit. He has a bad relationship with his elderly father, a painter who digs into his son at every opportunity, relentlessly. The old man, who is played perfectly by David Warner in the PBS series, which is simply called “Wallander,” lives alone and was going senile, an affliction that gets worse in the later novels. Like his father, Wallander has slovenly personal habits. His apartment is a sight; he wears rumpled clothing, and rarely combs his hair. He has other priorities. The one woman he made a play for while inebriated rebuked his advances and rejected him out of hand, which doesn’t do much for his low self-esteem. He worried about his weight and diet, slept poorly, and was preyed on by anxiety and depression. But despite all this baggage and burden he was a bulldog as a detective, a cop who would never give up till he got his man. He was able to compartmentalize his work from his life. He was able to focus on the case to the exclusion of personal demons and distractions, to bring his powers to bear, using both his analytical skills and his amazing intuition, which helped him find the two Eastern European killers after months of getting nowhere. He was an interesting character on both levels, as a sharp, determined detective always willing to go the extra mile to catch the bad guys, and as an emotional and psychological train wreck, a near-basket case who often seems to be hanging by a thread to sanity. Perhaps his personal confusions help him understand the criminal mind in some way. Whatever was the explanation, it was amazing what acentric balance he had; it allowed him to keep going as a functioning human being and resourceful detective. He may be a sad sack and a problem to himself and his family, but at HQ he was and still is THE MAN, the cop who always solved cases no matter how difficult they seemed at the beginning.
Tonight I finished FACELESS KILLERS by Henning Mankell, an author from Sweden I got involver with long before I heard of Stieg Larsson and his MILLENNIUM TRILOGY. FACELESS KILLERS was published in Sweden in 1991 but it had to wait till 1997 to be translated into English and be published here. It was his first novel that featured Kurt Wallander, his earnest but anxiety-ridden detective, who has solved many cases through ten novels. PBS has done 4 “MYSTERY” programs based on the Wallander novels and more are on the way.
The killers in FACELESS KILLERS were two sets of criminals, one set was two thugs who were in Sweden as refugees from Eastern Europe who robbed, tortured and killed an elderly Swedish couple who lived on a farm, and the other set was another pair who killed a Somali immigrant as a political gesture. The murder of the Somali was solved first. The killers were affiliated with a number of right wing hate groups, although they committed this crime on their own hook. They were political fanatics, one being a retired policeman, who held Neo-Nazi anti-immigration views, which provided the motivation for their actions. They killed as a statement against the national policy on immigration. It was something personal with them. Wallander brought them to justice rather quickly. With the other two he had less to go on and it took months, but he finally, by following up a hunch, tracked them down. They had brutally murdered the farm couple. They were hard habitual criminals looking for scores in Sweden.
I thought it was interesting that Mankell was dealing with the same extremist right wing groups that obsessed Steig Larsson. Apparently, anyone left of center who had the public’s ear was honor-bond to warn them about these fascist wannabe zealots. Wallander was hardly a bleeding heart Liberal when it came to the immigration question; but on the other hand he was aghast at the execution-style murder of the Somali who was walking and minding his own business. He could not let an innocent person like the Somali, no matter how he got the spot were he died, pass without the guilty parties being found and punished.
Actually, Wallander is being retired. I have already bought THE TROUBLED MAN; it is in it that his travail ends. At the moment I don’t know how but I’ll find out soon.
He was pretty much a mess from the get-go. His wife Mona had left him and already had made a connection with another man, which pained him deeply. He was suffering terribly without her. He was drinking too much to meet other women. He was estranged from his daughter Linda who was living with a black man, which made him somewhat uncomfortable. Near the end of the book he does improve the relation a bit. He has a bad relationship with his elderly father, a painter who digs into his son at every opportunity, relentlessly. The old man, who is played perfectly by David Warner in the PBS series, which is simply called “Wallander,” lives alone and was going senile, an affliction that gets worse in the later novels. Like his father, Wallander has slovenly personal habits. His apartment is a sight; he wears rumpled clothing, and rarely combs his hair. He has other priorities. The one woman he made a play for while inebriated rebuked his advances and rejected him out of hand, which doesn’t do much for his low self-esteem. He worried about his weight and diet, slept poorly, and was preyed on by anxiety and depression. But despite all this baggage and burden he was a bulldog as a detective, a cop who would never give up till he got his man. He was able to compartmentalize his work from his life. He was able to focus on the case to the exclusion of personal demons and distractions, to bring his powers to bear, using both his analytical skills and his amazing intuition, which helped him find the two Eastern European killers after months of getting nowhere. He was an interesting character on both levels, as a sharp, determined detective always willing to go the extra mile to catch the bad guys, and as an emotional and psychological train wreck, a near-basket case who often seems to be hanging by a thread to sanity. Perhaps his personal confusions help him understand the criminal mind in some way. Whatever was the explanation, it was amazing what acentric balance he had; it allowed him to keep going as a functioning human being and resourceful detective. He may be a sad sack and a problem to himself and his family, but at HQ he was and still is THE MAN, the cop who always solved cases no matter how difficult they seemed at the beginning.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
The Brothers
First of all I must tell you that the Arizona legislature in Phoenix voted yesterday to establish a state gun, which, not surprisingly, was the colt revolver used by the U.S. Cavalry in John Ford movies starring John Wayne. That is a first as far as I know. The state bird is a Vulture. They feed it defeated Democratic candidates.
Before Mike, Sue and I went into town yesterday, I had an appointment with my lung specialist. He never did call me about the throat scan so I was both eager and nervous to hear about it, although I went basically assuming the news would not be bad. It wasn’t. We talked for 5 minutes without him mentioning it, so I asked, what could you tell me about the throat scan? Oh, it was nothing he said, calling it an “accidental mismeasurement.” If you recall I bitched about the Respiratory Therapist, who was more interested in his damn cell phone than watching what how was doing. It pissed me off that they made me worry about nothing. The doctor suggested I get a shingles shot from my Primary; that came out of the blue and he never gave me a rationale for it. As it happens my brother wrote me two weeks ago that he had shingles around the back of his neck. The doc told me to see him again in 6 months. I felt he was blowing me off. That’s okay, I don’t like him either.
When I got home we got it together to go to the Tucson Art Museum to see a very funky show by two Mexican artists, the brothers Jamex and Elnar de la Torre, who specialize in blown glass sculpture and who have a wild imagination that embraces Dada, a Baroque extravagance, and a spirited attack of political correctness. They are bemused observers of social reality and technical masters of their medium, laughing wizards who practice an “Aesthetic of the Absurd.” Given the nature of the drawings I am currently doing, I can say I am in total sympathy with such an approach to creativity. Unfortunately, they did not provide a catalog for the show—apparently, all the pieces in the show are work owned along both sides of the border between the States and Mexico, which is why the show is entitled Borderlandia: Cultural Topographies. The form that shows up the most in all of the work was a red, transparent heart. It shows up again and again. In one large spectacular work, a rotating merry-go-round mandala that is approximately 10’ high and wide, there is a outside ring of red hearts about 18 inches apart and as the wheel rotates the hearts at the dip into the blood contained in a canoe underneath the merry-go-round mandala becoming the sacred hearts of Catholic lore. When I say blood I mean a red liquid of some kind that simulates the look and thickness of blood. I think they called the piece a “Bota-graph.” It is both a multi-layered pun and hybrid symbolism. A bota is a wine bag made of goatskins that can hold a couple of liters of wine. There is so much organic stuff in the pieces—blood, gore, skulls, vomit, interior body parts, animal skins and erections—that both Mike and I experienced some nausea walking around the museum. I don’t think that has ever happened to me before.
Technically speaking the work was brilliant. Besides all the body parts they included—and this has to be but a partial list—you can find many cultural artifacts in the “visual clutter,” embedded in the glass or cemented to the outside. There were bottle caps, small figurines, dolls, hot wheels, nuts and bolts, pictures and bas-reliefs of Jesus, kid’s toys, television sets, and everything else under the sun along the border. The brothers know what they are doing and carry off some incredibly complicated scenarios, all designed for two basic effects: a technical exuberance to wow you and to make you laugh. Mike and I laughed our way around the galleries, as their black humor hit home for us. Most pieces had a social subtext but others were just enjoyable nonsense. It was the best and most exciting show I have seen in Tucson in a long time. The last exciting show I saw in town was the Jim Waid show at the Pima College about three years ago.
As a side note, Mike discovered a wheelchair in the lobby of the museum and was kind enough to push me around which saved me a lot of pain and energy.
We had lunch at some genteel new age place Suzie had been to before during her in-town phase or when she goes on the town for one reason or another with her closest girl friends. The menu was a bit daunting for Mike and me so we played it safe and ordered hamburgers, expensive hamburgers too, $11 with Cole slaw on the side. They turned out to be really great burgers made out of quality meat. They were delicious, the best Hamburgers I have eaten since those hamburgers I had in Milwaukee in 2007, which were made from Kobe beef from Japan.
When we got home we continued watching “Mildred Pierce,” with Kate Winslet and Guy Pearce, a depression-era melodrama from a story by crime fiction writer James Cain that has been made into a movie before starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth and Zachary Scott. It was released in 1945 and it won Crawford an Oscar for her performance. We had started it the day before and we were determined to finish it last night. Altogether it is a five-hour movie. “Mildred Pierce” is a melodrama
between a mother and a spoiled daughter, with the daughter capable of ringing her mother’s bell whenever she wanted to and she wanted to rather too often. It would always end the same way with Mildred blowing her stack and then groveling to make it up the Veda, the daughter. Mildred never seemed capable of handling her, or standing up to her. She made the same mistakes over and over again, as Veda knew exactly what to do to set her off and to get her way. It got to be depressing to see Mildred so ensnared by her demons and so conventional in her comprehension and values. She was also very naïve, so bad she lost her chain of restaurants that she had worked so hard to build up due to being outsmarted by one female business partner and one ex-lover; she also lost her husband (Guy Pearce) to Veda, whose cruelty reached new heights by the end of the movie. The daughter and Mildred’s slacker ex-husband go off to New York to make their fortune with her singing voice, while back in lowly Glendale, a place Veda hated with a passion, Mildred and her first husband, now remarried—they were a fit from the beginning--go back to the way it was in 1930, with her husband a small-timer in real estate and Mildred back to making pies to sell to her old eateries. How sad it was to realize she had learned so little through her salad days in business.
Before Mike, Sue and I went into town yesterday, I had an appointment with my lung specialist. He never did call me about the throat scan so I was both eager and nervous to hear about it, although I went basically assuming the news would not be bad. It wasn’t. We talked for 5 minutes without him mentioning it, so I asked, what could you tell me about the throat scan? Oh, it was nothing he said, calling it an “accidental mismeasurement.” If you recall I bitched about the Respiratory Therapist, who was more interested in his damn cell phone than watching what how was doing. It pissed me off that they made me worry about nothing. The doctor suggested I get a shingles shot from my Primary; that came out of the blue and he never gave me a rationale for it. As it happens my brother wrote me two weeks ago that he had shingles around the back of his neck. The doc told me to see him again in 6 months. I felt he was blowing me off. That’s okay, I don’t like him either.
When I got home we got it together to go to the Tucson Art Museum to see a very funky show by two Mexican artists, the brothers Jamex and Elnar de la Torre, who specialize in blown glass sculpture and who have a wild imagination that embraces Dada, a Baroque extravagance, and a spirited attack of political correctness. They are bemused observers of social reality and technical masters of their medium, laughing wizards who practice an “Aesthetic of the Absurd.” Given the nature of the drawings I am currently doing, I can say I am in total sympathy with such an approach to creativity. Unfortunately, they did not provide a catalog for the show—apparently, all the pieces in the show are work owned along both sides of the border between the States and Mexico, which is why the show is entitled Borderlandia: Cultural Topographies. The form that shows up the most in all of the work was a red, transparent heart. It shows up again and again. In one large spectacular work, a rotating merry-go-round mandala that is approximately 10’ high and wide, there is a outside ring of red hearts about 18 inches apart and as the wheel rotates the hearts at the dip into the blood contained in a canoe underneath the merry-go-round mandala becoming the sacred hearts of Catholic lore. When I say blood I mean a red liquid of some kind that simulates the look and thickness of blood. I think they called the piece a “Bota-graph.” It is both a multi-layered pun and hybrid symbolism. A bota is a wine bag made of goatskins that can hold a couple of liters of wine. There is so much organic stuff in the pieces—blood, gore, skulls, vomit, interior body parts, animal skins and erections—that both Mike and I experienced some nausea walking around the museum. I don’t think that has ever happened to me before.
Technically speaking the work was brilliant. Besides all the body parts they included—and this has to be but a partial list—you can find many cultural artifacts in the “visual clutter,” embedded in the glass or cemented to the outside. There were bottle caps, small figurines, dolls, hot wheels, nuts and bolts, pictures and bas-reliefs of Jesus, kid’s toys, television sets, and everything else under the sun along the border. The brothers know what they are doing and carry off some incredibly complicated scenarios, all designed for two basic effects: a technical exuberance to wow you and to make you laugh. Mike and I laughed our way around the galleries, as their black humor hit home for us. Most pieces had a social subtext but others were just enjoyable nonsense. It was the best and most exciting show I have seen in Tucson in a long time. The last exciting show I saw in town was the Jim Waid show at the Pima College about three years ago.
As a side note, Mike discovered a wheelchair in the lobby of the museum and was kind enough to push me around which saved me a lot of pain and energy.
We had lunch at some genteel new age place Suzie had been to before during her in-town phase or when she goes on the town for one reason or another with her closest girl friends. The menu was a bit daunting for Mike and me so we played it safe and ordered hamburgers, expensive hamburgers too, $11 with Cole slaw on the side. They turned out to be really great burgers made out of quality meat. They were delicious, the best Hamburgers I have eaten since those hamburgers I had in Milwaukee in 2007, which were made from Kobe beef from Japan.
When we got home we continued watching “Mildred Pierce,” with Kate Winslet and Guy Pearce, a depression-era melodrama from a story by crime fiction writer James Cain that has been made into a movie before starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth and Zachary Scott. It was released in 1945 and it won Crawford an Oscar for her performance. We had started it the day before and we were determined to finish it last night. Altogether it is a five-hour movie. “Mildred Pierce” is a melodrama
between a mother and a spoiled daughter, with the daughter capable of ringing her mother’s bell whenever she wanted to and she wanted to rather too often. It would always end the same way with Mildred blowing her stack and then groveling to make it up the Veda, the daughter. Mildred never seemed capable of handling her, or standing up to her. She made the same mistakes over and over again, as Veda knew exactly what to do to set her off and to get her way. It got to be depressing to see Mildred so ensnared by her demons and so conventional in her comprehension and values. She was also very naïve, so bad she lost her chain of restaurants that she had worked so hard to build up due to being outsmarted by one female business partner and one ex-lover; she also lost her husband (Guy Pearce) to Veda, whose cruelty reached new heights by the end of the movie. The daughter and Mildred’s slacker ex-husband go off to New York to make their fortune with her singing voice, while back in lowly Glendale, a place Veda hated with a passion, Mildred and her first husband, now remarried—they were a fit from the beginning--go back to the way it was in 1930, with her husband a small-timer in real estate and Mildred back to making pies to sell to her old eateries. How sad it was to realize she had learned so little through her salad days in business.
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