|
|
Friday, October 31
DEMOCRACY AT THE MALL
by
Lloydville
on Fri 31 Oct 2008 07:44 PM PDT
Today was the last day of early voting in Nevada so I went down to my local Obama field office to volunteer to drive voters to the polls. I thought there would be a big rush to vote early on this last day, and so did the folks at the field office, but in the end I just got one assignment -- a young man named Scott who lives in a modest apartment complex about fifteen minutes from my house. He'd been contacted by an Obama volunteer named Laura who also lives in the complex. Scott doesn't have a phone so I rendezvous-ed with Laura and she brought Scott out to my car.
Scott had a two-hour window for voting -- I picked him up at noon and he had to be back at 2 o'clock to look after his kids when his wife went off to work. I got a feeling that things weren't going too well for Scott in Las Vegas, economically speaking. He mentioned that he was thinking of moving to North Carolina, because he'd heard the job opportunities were better there. He was excited about Obama but took the rest of the ballot just as seriously. He'd already been to a polling place to get a sample ballot so he could study it. He had with him a hand-written list of the candidates he wanted to vote for for local offices.
He was pleasantly surprised when I offered him some Gatorade from a cooler in the back of The Ghost -- I wanted to be prepared just in case people had to wait for a long time in lines outdoors. "You've got ice, too," he said. "We should go fishing after this!" We talked about how much we loved fishing.
His local polling place was located in the Sears Court of the Meadows Mall -- seen above without the election machinery in place. (Nevada is way ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to making voting convenient -- there are early voting stations in supermarkets as well.) There looked to be about fifty voting machines in the center of the court, with a long line of people waiting to use them. When we joined the back of the line an election board volunteer told us the wait would be about 13 minutes -- and that's almost exactly how long it was.
Scott took a while at his machine, checking his list. Watching the crowd of voters while I waited for him I got very emotional. Here were a bunch of regular folks in a mall choosing the next leader of the free world. They all looked incredibly proud, almost beatific, as they handed off their election cards at the end of the process and received their sticker saying "I Voted". For one moment each of them had stood in absolute equality with every other American citizen -- their opinion absolutely equal to the opinion of anyone else.
You can try to appreciate the process of democracy intellectually and philosophically, but you can't get close to the miracle of it until you see it in action like this, when a phrase like "the blessings of freedom" suddenly comes alive and grips the heart.
When I dropped Scott off at his home afterwards we shook hands warmly. "Let's hope we'll be partying on Wednesday," he said. I held up crossed fingers and he laughed. He was back in plenty of time to look after the kids and I'd helped a fellow citizen have his say in one of the most important elections in American history.
Earlier we'd been talking about how amazing the Obama organization was. "It's like we're all pulling together on this," he said -- a thirty-something black man from New Jersey talking to a fifty-something white man from North Carolina, thrown together by chance and hope at a momentous time in a shopping mall in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
America . . . it's just too much, just too cool.
ALL HALLOWS EVE: MASKERS
by
Lloydville
on Fri 31 Oct 2008 01:52 AM PDT
But . . . what if they aren't masks?
[Image by Laurie Lipton from her amazing Day Of the Dead series.]
Thursday, October 30
ALL HALLOWS EVE: ONE MORE PREMONITION
by
Lloydville
on Thu 30 Oct 2008 12:32 AM PDT
You left her standing at the altar, all those years ago -- tomorrow night she will be back for her revenge . . .
[Once again, the image is by the stupendously creepy Travis Louie, via Femme Femme Femme.]
Wednesday, October 29
ALL HALLOWS EVE: PREMONITIONS
by
Lloydville
on Wed 29 Oct 2008 12:58 AM PDT
At a recent rally, Sarah Palin was reading through one of her scripted attacks on Barack Obama when someone in the audience yelled out, ". . . and he's a nigger!" Palin looked momentarily flustered, paused, stumbled over a word, then soldiered on bravely as though nothing had happened.
I'd like to think that you or I, if we'd had the microphone at such a moment, would have stopped, chastised the woman in the crowd for her remark, perhaps asked security to have her removed from the hall, reminded everyone that we didn't approve of such language and didn't want the support of those who use it. But of course Sarah Palin and John McCain do want the support of people who use the n-word -- that's the whole point of their rhetoric painting Obama as a not-quite-American other. They just don't want people to shout the word out at them when the TV cameras are rolling -- they want at least a cosmetic firewall between themselves and the dark thoughts they're summoning up in people's hearts.
Bad witch, Sarah.
But with Halloween so close now, let's not forget that there are good witches, too . . .
Trick or treat?
Tuesday, October 28
ALL HALLOWS EVE: PREMONITION
by
Lloydville
on Tue 28 Oct 2008 02:52 AM PDT
The spirits are gathering . . .
[Image by the stupendously creepy Travis Louie, via Femme Femme Femme.]
Monday, October 27
'TIS BUT A FLESH WOUND
by
Lloydville
on Mon 27 Oct 2008 02:34 AM PDT
My nephew Harry, 15, is a filmmaker. He makes mostly short comic films of a satirical or surreal nature. You can see a selection of them at his YouTube page 'Tis But A Flesh Wound.
This cruel and cynical film made me laugh, though I'm not proud to admit it:
Love Is A Wonderfully Great Thing
Harry also edits clips from movies to unlikely songs. Here's a piece which cuts together shots from the films of his favorite director, Stanley Kubrick, to the song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan:
Kubrick -- Subterranean
It's quite cool.
Sunday, October 26
THE BIRTH OF A NATION SCRIPT
by
Lloydville
on Sun 26 Oct 2008 05:11 PM PDT
In his brilliant book Raising Cain, a cultural meditation on blackface minstrelsy, W. T. Lhamon, Jr. points out that minstrelsy is founded on an admiration for and celebration of black charisma, specifically the charisma of black cultural style. This essentially positive aspect of the phenomenon has persisted through time, even as minstrelsy simultaneously attempted to belittle and marginalize black culture -- to keep it contained.
Part of the desire to contain it was undoubtedly inspired by anxiety arising from the sexual appeal of black charisma -- the fear that white women might be attracted to it. Minstrelsy as a form could not negotiate and neutralize this anxiety on its own -- other cultural strategies were required. One such strategy was the myth of black male aggressiveness towards white women -- the notion that black males possessed an instinctive desire to ravish white women.
For various and obvious reasons there is no significant history of sexual assaults on white women by black males in America -- and certainly no history of it even remotely comparable to the history of the sexual exploitation of black women by white males. The myth has a psycho-sexual origin. It is always associated with the fear that black political power will encourage sexual assaults by black males on white women, and often assumes that the secret agenda of black political power is "miscegenation".
The myth is usually presented in pseudo-historical terms. The Birth Of A Nation, a fiction film from 1915, asserts its historical authenticity in presenting the campaign for the political enfranchisement of blacks during Reconstruction as motivated primarily by the desire of black males to ravish white women. The film draws on a body of now discredited scholarship about Reconstruction which essentially promoted the same mythology.
We need to understand this mythology in order to understand the recent incident in Pennsylvania in which a young white woman claimed to have been beaten and sexually assaulted by a tall black man because of her support of John McCain. She's probably never seen The Birth Of A Nation, but its mythology is still alive in the culture -- she clearly drew on it when concocting her false story, assuming it would be plausible to many, as indeed it was.
News organizations reported it widely and immediately, before it could be confirmed. John McCain's campaign instantly assumed it was true and began to publicize it. McCain and Palin even went so far as to call the woman to express their sympathy. All of this occurred before the actual facts had been established, and in spite of the fact that the story was objectively implausible.
The woman said her black attacker had carved a "B" on her face, for "Barack" -- but the letter was carved backwards, as though it had been done in a mirror. The woman also had a reputation for being emotionally unbalanced, and the supposed attack occurred at a time when Obama was kicking McCain's butt in the race, with the overwhelming support of white voters -- hardly the time one would expect spontaneous eruptions of black rage against whites.
But the story "felt" true to many -- because it reprised a mythological script buried deep in America's cultural psyche, a script in which black political power is forever linked to sexual assaults by black males on white women.
Try thinking of Todd's "script" with different racial actors. Suppose she'd been a black woman who said she was attacked by a tall Irish-American with flaming red hair who, enraged by an Obama sticker on her car, carved a backwards "McC" on her cheek in the course of beating, robbing and sexually assaulting her. She would probably have been sent immediately to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. News organizations would not have rushed to disseminate the outlandish story before having it confirmed.
I'm also guessing that Todd's story would have been greeted with extreme suspicion by all parties if it had not included a component of sexual assault -- the sine qua non of the Birth Of A Nation script.
Saturday, October 25
A TOP FIVE LIST FOR OBAMA SUPPORTERS
by
Lloydville
on Sat 25 Oct 2008 05:41 PM PDT
I got an e-mail from MoveOn.org asking me to post the text below on my blog. I don't think MoveOn.org has the slightest idea whether or not I have a blog -- I think they assumed that so many people do have blogs that a message aimed at their entire e-mail list would hit enough bloggers to be worth the shot.
In any case I'm happy to comply with their request:
TOP 5 REASONS OBAMA SUPPORTERS SHOULDN'T REST EASY
1. The polls may be wrong. This is an unprecedented election. No one knows how racism
may affect what voters tell pollsters—or what they do in the voting booth. And the polls are narrowing anyway. In the
last few days, John McCain has gained ground in most national polls, as his campaign has gone even more negative.
2. Dirty tricks. Republicans are already illegally purging voters from the rolls
in some states. They're whipping up hysteria over ACORN to justify more challenges to new voters. Misleading flyers about
the voting process have started appearing in black neighborhoods. And of course, many counties still use unsecure voting
machines.
3. October surprise. In politics, [a week] is a long time. The next McCain smear could
dominate the news for a week. There could be a crisis with Iran, or Bin Laden could release another tape, or worse.
4. Those who forget history... In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote after trailing
by seven points in the final days of the race. In 1980, Reagan was eight points down in the polls in late October and came
back to win. Races can shift—fast!
5. Landslide. Even with Barack Obama in the White House, passing universal health care and a new clean-energy policy
is going to be hard. Insurance, drug and oil companies will fight us every step of the way. We need the kind of landslide
that will give Barack a huge mandate.
If you agree that we shouldn't rest easy, please sign up to volunteer at your local Obama
office by clicking here:
Volunteer For ObamaIf you've got a blog, why not post the above list and link on it? If you don't, why not paste them into an e-mail and send them to all your friends?
Thursday, October 23
FROM THE ARCHIVES: REPORT FROM THE BEACH, 18 AUGUST 1998
by
Lloydville
on Thu 23 Oct 2008 01:05 AM PDT
The Ventura County Fair is over, the ferris wheel is gone. Yesterday a workman died from a fall in the course of dismantling
it. The accident was attributed to the mist.
Wednesday, October 22
EVERY SINGLE HOUR
by
Lloydville
on Wed 22 Oct 2008 12:21 AM PDT
Here's part of a memo an Obama Regional Field Director in North Carolina (where I was born) sent her volunteers last week:
Barack really is
expecting a lot out of us -- and there isn't much else for him to do. He
has placed this election in our hands at this point. It's up to us now.
We may never again have our hands on history quite like this again for
as long as we live. That makes each hour so, so precious. We can slack
off, sleep in, and make excuses for the rest of our lives. But today --
and for the next 3 weeks . . . whether we knew what we were getting into
or not . . . we have ended up with people's lives, livelihoods, and dreams
for their children -- all dependent on our performance day in and day
out. This is our one chance at history . . . our one chance at perfection.
Our one chance to live forever. So today -- breathe this in . . . realize
that your grandkids will be reading about you . . . realize that you will
miss this feeling very, very soon . . . and win every single hour.
This describes the sort of feeling men in war have. Teddy Roosevelt described his action on San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American War as "my crowded hour". Oliver Wendell Holmes said of his peers who fought in the Civil War "in our
youth our hearts were touched with fire." It's probably what the early adherents to a new religious revelation feel in their urgency to spread the word. The common ground is effort and risk and sacrifice for others, for a cause outside of and greater than the self. The cause is not Obama's run for political office -- it's "people's lives, livelihoods, and dreams for their children."
The Regional Field Director is talking about that moment in a battle when the generals have done what they can do and it's time for the men to move up to the line and march to the sound of the guns. She's talking about that moment when the disciples leave the teacher and head out to obey his command, "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations . . ."
Obama isn't just running a campaign, he's training citizens for acts of service, crowding their hours with meaning, touching their hearts with fire, giving them a duty and a place among the generations of men, which really is one way of living forever. Obama's success or failure in the campaign, or in the Presidency, is beside the point now.
[With thanks to FiveThirtyEight.com for the memo.]
Tuesday, October 21
AMERICAN SPIRIT
by
Lloydville
on Tue 21 Oct 2008 12:29 AM PDT
The sticker on my shirt pocket says it all -- I voted yesterday in Clark County, Nevada. It was great -- I went late in the afternoon, as advised, to a senior center in a park near my home. There were a fair number of voters on hand but no lines -- I was in and out in less than fifteen minutes.
Honoring the convention of the secret ballot, I won't reveal who I voted for, though I will go through the thinking that led me to the choice I made. My criteria for a candidate this year were quite rigorous.
First, I wanted a candidate who was a celebrity. We've had so many Presidents in our history who could never have made even the semi-finals on American Idol that it's getting embarrassing. We need a rock star in the White House.
Second, I wanted a candidate who has such a dim view of America that he's willing to pal around with terrorists. That, to me, shows a refreshing sense of open-mindedness.
Finally, I wanted a candidate who's a socialist -- someone who wouldn't blink if called upon to nationalize the American banking system should that ever, God forbid, become necessary. (Oh, wait . . . we've already started nationalizing the banking system -- but we could never have done it if the current Republican administration hadn't summoned the courage to live up to its core socialist convictions.)
I think I found my guy, and I hope I'm not giving too much away when I tell you how good it felt to look at that odd name at the top of my provisional ballot print-out and then touch the square on the screen that read "Cast Ballot".
The surge of American spirit that coursed through my body reminded me that I needed a smoke. I stepped outside into the bright sunshine of a Fall day in the Mojave Desert, lit up a cigarette and thought to myself, "Mission accomplished." You've got a mission, too, my friends -- get it done.
Monday, October 20
THE LODGER (1927)
by
Lloydville
on Mon 20 Oct 2008 04:52 AM PDT
Alfred Hitchcock's silent film The Lodger, from 1927, is wonderfully entertaining, alive with visual inventiveness, with the director's unbridled joy in making cinema. It's not, however, a terribly successful thriller, and thus not a terribly successful film, since a thriller is what it sets out to be.
The problem is the presence of Ivor Novello in the title role -- or perhaps the way Hitchcock uses him. Novello was a handsome fellow with a decidedly fey quality. Hitchcock would eventually find ways of using an actor's ambiguous sexuality to disturb an audience, keep it off balance, but he doesn't seem to be trying to do that with Novello. He lurches back and forth between presenting Novello's lodger as an almost inhuman visual icon of menace and mystery (see above) and letting the actor present his own impersonation of a matinee idol. Novello does his best to appear brooding and menacing from time to time but he succeeds only in suggesting a man vaguely distracted and slightly peeved about something.
There's nothing really creepy about Novello's lodger, except that he seems to inhabit a different film than the one Hitchcock is trying to make. He comes across as conventionally, not pathologically, insecure. The unhinged desperation we sense in Bruno from Strangers On A Train or Norman from Psycho is nowhere in evidence. It's really impossible to take Novello's lodger seriously as a suspect in the "golden curls" murders, or as a passionate suitor of the heroine. At the same time, he can't really secure our sympathy as that archetype familiar from so many later Hitchcock films, the innocent man wrongly accused, since we spend most of the film without any clear information about his guilt or innocence.
Still, Hitchcock constructs his movie with relentless, creative imagination as though it had a real villain or potential villain or wrongly accused villain at its center. We can admire and enjoy its brilliance but we can't care about its story -- which offers only the most perfunctory kind of suspense, without any subliminal psychological undertow. The film is aesthetically dazzling without being really engaging on any other level.
Sunday, October 19
DEMOCRACY THREATENED BY CARTOON CHARACTERS
by
Lloydville
on Sun 19 Oct 2008 01:19 AM PDT
It's been reported that ACORN, a nationwide syndicate of community organizations, has submitted voter registrations for a number of fictional characters, including some, like Mickey Mouse, who are animated figures. John McCain and Sarah Palin have drawn attention to the serious threat this poses to the American way of life. "Suppose Mickey Mouse shows up at a polling place in Ohio?" Palin asks. "Will his vote be counted? Will a ballot submitted by a cartoon character affect the outcome in this important battleground state?"
When the McCain campaign was asked how an animated character could physically enter a voting booth and cast a ballot, a spokesman directed reporters' attention to the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which demonstrated that cartoon characters could interact with live human beings.
Meanwhile reports have leaked from Sarah Palin's campaign that, if elected, she would urge the establishment of "concentration compounds" for women identified as practicing witchcraft on U. S. soil. According to insiders, Palin intends to allow witches to leave the country voluntarily -- however, if they refuse, she believes they should be placed on large barges which would be towed out to sea and sunk. Privately, she blames witches for "cursing her tongue" and preventing her from speaking coherent English sentences on the campaign trail.
Saturday, October 18
PROUD AMERICANS
by
Lloydville
on Sat 18 Oct 2008 12:07 AM PDT
Of course, you and I would never use that kind of language about Cindy McCain, even though she's now gone back to taking digs at Michelle Obama, after apologizing for doing so the first time. "I've always been proud of my country," says Cindy, with her cute little Sarah Palin smirk. Why wouldn't she be proud of a country where a girl can inherit 100 million dollars, bust up a war hero's marriage and become the trophy wife of a pathetic old man who's got a shot at being President? This is, truly, the land of opportunity -- if you're very, very lucky and have no morals to speak of.
I'm sure John was just joking when he used the "c" word about his wife. The guy has a sense of humor, after all. Here's a joke he told at a Republican fund-raiser back in the 1990s:
Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father.
When you and I hear things like that, we just laugh it off, right? The phrase "sick, twisted motherfucker" doesn't even enter our minds.
Now jolly John has authorized robo-calls in battleground states reminding people that Barack Obama has "worked with a terrorist". I guess most of his supporters will be content to let a McCain administration take the appropriate action against Obama after John is elected President -- putting the uppity young buck on trial as an accomplice to terrorism, of the domestic variety. Maybe one of those supporters will jump the gun, as it were, and go for some vigilante justice in the meantime -- a time-honored tradition in this great country we're all so proud of.
That won't be John's fault, will it? And it won't make Cindy any less proud of America. Things happen to that sort when they step out of line. (Cue cute Sarah Palin smirk.) We're still the shining city on the hill, no matter how much blood runs down the hillside into the valley below -- doesn't affect the view from the top of the heap at all.
Friday, October 17
MONEY
by
Lloydville
on Fri 17 Oct 2008 01:24 PM PDT
Early on in the Presidential race I sent a small amount of money to Barack Obama's campaign -- in recognition of the fact that, as I believed then, I'd be voting in this election, for the first time in my life, in favor a candidate I really liked rather than against a candidate I hated. That all changed when Senator Obama voted to grant immunity to the big telecoms for conspiring with the Bush administration to violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. I swore then that Obama would get no more money from me and I accepted the fact that I'd be voting for him while holding my nose.
That was before Sarah Palin, before she and McCain began their program of coded hate speech against Obama, which has emboldened many of their supporters to echo the vile suggestions implied in their rhetoric and take them to their logical ends -- overtly violent speech and overtly violent threats against a terrorist other. Posing as the leaders of a sheriff's posse bent on cleaning up Dodge they are in fact the leaders of a lynch mob bent on stringing the colored guy up from the nearest cottonwood.
This is not acceptable morally, and will have heinous moral consequences for the nation if their irresponsible tactics succeed in carrying McCain and Palin to the White House.
Consequently I've decided that it's o. k. to send more money to Obama's campaign as long as I make an equal contribution at the same time to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is bringing suit to overturn the telecom immunity bill Obama voted for.
You can and should do the same. Contribute to the EFF here. Contribute to Obama here. Do it for the good of the country and the good of your own soul.
[With thanks to the awesome Fluharty for the images above.]
Wednesday, October 15
THE VOICE OF PROPHECY
by
Lloydville
on Wed 15 Oct 2008 05:35 PM PDT
The Biblical tradition of prophecy is not exactly about predicting the future, except in this sense, "If you don't get your act together, God is going to kick your front teeth out." It's a gentle reminder of the laws of spiritual physics.
A prophet speaks the words of our ancestors, delivers the collective wisdom of millennia, reminds us of the clear and present consequences of immediate choices.
Prophets channel things, crystallize vague signs that portend changes in the weather. Strictly speaking, they don't prescribe, or preach, or even condemn -- at least not from a personal perspective. They're just strings that vibrate in the wind.
Being a prophet can't be fun -- it requires suspending the prerogatives of the self, wandering around homeless, listening to voices no one else can hear. You have to be a little crazy. When Bob Dylan sings "There's not even room enough to be anywhere" he might well be describing the plight of the prophet.
It's interesting to think of Dylan's voice as prophetic, in the antique sense. In 1964, the Beatles told us how much fun the 60s were going to be. Not long afterwards, in "Like A Rolling Stone", Dylan told us what the 60s were going to cost us. Not many people listened. The song only made sense in retrospect.
Astonishingly, Dylan, who'd helped a generation grow up, stuck around to help that same generation grow old. Along the way, he kept delivering shocks. He became a born-again Christian and turned himself into a joke for many. In this phase he composed a series of modern Gospel songs that we can now recognize as a brilliant contribution to that particular tradition of American music. In retrospect, again, it seems like a dazzling, moving achievement.
He's never left the road, the hard grind of touring. There were times when he was so wasted on stage that no one could tell precisely what song he was singing. Then he'd rebound, rework his old songs so they seemed brand new again. His last two albums can stand with the best of the work that made his name forty years ago.
At almost every concert over the years he's sung "Blowin' In the Wind" -- the song that made it hip for young white kids to support the Civil Rights Movement. He sings it for people who might only be seeing him that one time, who want to say they've heard the iconic song live.
He may have other reasons, too. He may believe that people still need to hear the song -- to remember all the questions still blowing in the American wind. Some of them will be answered on 4 November, for good or ill.
In any case, it's a good time to remember where the song came from -- an old spiritual called "No More Auction Block", where Dylan found the general shape of the tune and the inspiration for a new variation on the eternal lament over American slavery and its echoes down through time.
Listen to "No More Auction Block" here -- sung by Dylan at the Gaslight in Greenwich Village in 1962. He was twenty-one years-old. "Many thousands gone," the song says, speaking of those who died in chains on American soil, and by extension those who died in the chains of an unjust society, those who died fighting the injustice, or perpetrating it. Dylan doesn't claim to speak for any of them -- he's just transmitting their sorrow, their hope, their repentance, just reminding us that their voices are blowing in the wind, and asking us to listen. You can hear Dylan himself listening as he sings the song. It's what prophets do.
 1 Attachments
Tuesday, October 14
AN ERIC GILL FOR TODAY
by
Lloydville
on Tue 14 Oct 2008 09:06 PM PDT
A fine rendering by Eric Gill of the Lion Of St. Mark, still awaiting the Gospel on which his paw is meant to rest.
Gill was a very strange man. A devout Roman Catholic, he created a lot of superb religious imagery, and a lot of very explicit erotic imagery, also superb. Some artists can hold those two realms in their imaginations at the same time -- like Prince, for example, before he got seriously into the Jehovah's Witness thing, whatever that is, and started censoring the dirty bits out of his early work.
Sometimes, for Gill, though very rarely, the religious and the erotic inter-penetrated in his art, as it were, and he entered the realm of blasphemy -- as when he depicted Jesus having sex with an unidentified female saint. Both wear halos. There is a place for such images in art, transgressive and shocking as they may be to some, since they record genuine tensions that grip the human heart.
In his personal life, however, Gill got seriously unhinged. He sexually abused his children, committed incest with his sister and engaged in sexual acts with his dog. This naturally tends to color one's view of his work, which is a shame, since his work is very good. He just had a screw loose somewhere -- I suppose it could happen to an accountant as easily as to an artist.
Saturday, October 11
SOUTH OF THE BORDER, DOWN MEXICO WAY
by
Lloydville
on Sat 11 Oct 2008 12:06 AM PDT
Government economists in Mexico City have warned President Calderón that a total collapse of the U. S. economy could result in a mass illegal invasion of Mexico by U. S. citizens looking for work picking crops.
They have pointed out the serious social and economic consequences that would result from such an invasion and have urged the President to begin preparing now to meet the crisis in case it should it occur, which they see as ever more likely. Their proposals include the start of work on a border-long fence designed to stop U. S. migrant workers from crossing into Mexican territory in the first place. "Once they're here," one prominent economist warned, "dealing with them in a compassionate way will become increasingly problematic."
Friday, October 10
UPDATE: FILM REVIEWS
by
Lloydville
on Fri 10 Oct 2008 10:03 AM PDT
I've just updated the links in the Film Reviews A-Z section (to the left) -- which now covers 114 films. The Film Noir Master List has also been updated to incorporate some recently viewed titles.
Check them out.
Thursday, October 9
SWEET DREAM, BABY
by
Lloydville
on Thu 09 Oct 2008 07:47 AM PDT
How long must I dream?
Wednesday, October 8
THAT ONE
by
Lloydville
on Wed 08 Oct 2008 12:21 AM PDT
He's one of them, you know.
(A Negro . . .)
John McCain and Sarah Palin are playing with fire when they try to frame Barack Obama as a terrorist other. The dark thoughts they're trying to plant in people's hearts might be all that's needed to embolden some nut with a gun to take the next logical step and try to rid the nation of this alien threat.
"That one," McCain calls Obama, standing next to him -- as though he were some creature without a name. "Who's the real Obama?" McCain asks a crowd. "A terrorist!" someone answers back. McCain says nothing. "He pals around with terrorists," Palin tells another crowd. "Kill him!" someone screams. Palin says nothing.
That cry was enough to get the Secret Service on the case but it wasn't enough to wipe the smirk off of Sarah Palin's face.
The lunatic fringe of the base gets the message. At another Palin rally, a gang of her supporters taunts a group of journalists, calling a young black technician "boy" and a "nigger". We know where this sort of thing leads, where it's led us so many times before -- to the strange fruit Billie Holiday sang about, to that motel balcony in Memphis.
If Michelle Obama ends up a widow, the sin won't rest on McCain and Palin alone, but on anyone who supports these despicable demagogues in their reckless and wicked grab for power, even at the cost of their own souls. The souls of many are on trial here.
The soul of the nation is on trial here.
Tuesday, October 7
VOICES FROM THE REAL HEARTLAND
by
Lloydville
on Tue 07 Oct 2008 10:56 AM PDT
Ralph Stanley, surviving member of the immortal Stanley Brothers bluegrass duo, just did a radio ad for Barack Obama addressed to his fellow citizens in southwest Virginia. In it he commends Obama as a good family man -- something that's important to folks in that part of the world. I wish the national media could talk more about the issue of (real) family values, which Obama lives and John McCain hasn't.
A few years ago Ralph put out an album of duets with various musicians younger than himself called Clinch Mountain Country. Ralph's wife said her favorite duet was the one Ralph did with Bob Dylan, "The Lonesome River", and it really is something -- a couple of voices with the bark still on singing from the ageless heart of America. It's a great track and great album.
Check it out.
Monday, October 6
SAD OLD SOLDIERS
by
Lloydville
on Mon 06 Oct 2008 02:43 AM PDT
John McCain is starting to remind me of someone -- another great old soldier long past his prime who traded his fading honor for a shot at power . . . just not thinking straight, I fear. At any rate, at this point no American who cares about his or her own honor, or the honor of the nation, can afford to support this pathetic old man on his dark journey to moral oblivion.
Sunday, October 5
THE REWARDS OF VIRTUE
by
Lloydville
on Sun 05 Oct 2008 08:51 AM PDT
My friends Lily and Cotty (above) flew into town from Los Angeles this weekend and met up with another old friend, Frank, and his pal Bob, who'd driven here from the same place. They'd all come to volunteer for a couple of days' work going door to door for the Obama campaign, collecting pledge cards and contact information, registering new voters and generally spreading the good word.
They walked (and walked) through middle-class neighborhoods dotted with foreclosure signs (and abandoned homes that will probably soon sport foreclosure signs.) They did what they could -- and Frank (on the left below, with Bob) actually managed to get a new voter to register. Such things, multiplied many times over, might make the difference in what still looks to be an election of razor-thin margins -- with Nevada a crucial battleground in the contest.
Their virtuous behavior was richly rewarded by the gods of chance here in Silly Town. Lily, who's sixteen, couldn't join us, alas, but the rest of us went off gambling downtown. We ended up at Binion's, where Cotty and Frank hit the craps tables, Bob took his chances at roulette and I sat down at a no-limit game in the poker room.
I was up $96 when Cotty tapped me on the shoulder and said the gang was ready to head home. I cashed in my winnings and was feeling pretty smug, until I heard about Cotty's and Frank's run at the craps table. Without revealing too much specific personal information, perhaps I can say that between them they won about $1500.
They slept, I am sure, the sleep of the just and the sleep of the lucky, a rare but delightful convergence of satisfactions.
Saturday, October 4
A CALENDAR GIRL FOR OCTOBER
by
Lloydville
on Sat 04 Oct 2008 07:36 AM PDT
An impenetrable disguise . . .
[By Al Moore for Esquire, 1950]
Friday, October 3
VAUDEVILLE SLANG
by
Lloydville
on Fri 03 Oct 2008 06:52 AM PDT
As I've observed before, vaudeville was the premier form of American entertainment for almost sixty years -- longer than the era of studio-dominated filmmaking, the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood. In those years vaudeville contributed a number of expressions to the American language.
"Big time" and "small time" are expressions from vaudeville. In vaudeville parlance, managers and agents booked "time" -- weeks or split weeks in a particular theater or on a circuit. The higher-paying circuits were the big time -- the less prestigious circuits the small time. Big and small referred primarily to salary levels, with corresponding implications of prestige. You could also refer to "Keith time" or "Pantages time" -- bookings in the Keith & Albee or Pantages theater chains.
The word "killer", used in a positive sense, as in "a
killer app", also comes from vaudeville. In vaudeville, an act was a killer if it was so good it
killed the audience -- ruined it for the next act. "I killed 'em" or "I slayed 'em" were the ultimate boasts a performer could make, suggesting that he or she went over big but also that they made life tough for the acts that had to follow them on the bill, always an important consideration in the inherently competitive arena of variety entertainment.
You moved up the ladder in vaudeville by becoming "a hard act to follow". You reached the top of the profession when you were an impossible act to follow.
|
|
