Dear Sir

 

I was not the only news person who kept correspondence from readers.

Some of it was useful in planning future articles or correcting the record. All of it was useful as a reminder that there were human beings on the other end of "daily journalism."

Some of it reminded me that people could hold strong opinions about what I did. I heard from them more than I would have liked, I guess, but probably as much as I needed.

This letter from December 1990 was sent to the editorial page, and it's pretty clear from the opening line that the writer was not entirely sure about what was bugging her but wanted to grind an axe -- and she might actually have wanted to bury one in my head, figuratively speaking. LOL

I don't recall if this letter was run on the Op Ed page, but photocopies were shared with the executive editor, the managing editor and me. The paper never removed the mug shot that ran with my column; it was the paper's practice to run photos of columnists.

This letter was unusual in that most of those critical of me took issue with the content of the pieces I wrote, which were often about issues of social justice and discrimination. I studied critical letters for the points being made and occasionally, but not often, responded to them.

I won't say I ever grew indifferent to letters that were critical of me, but I do think I grew a thicker skin over the years, and bristled less often to personal attacks. (That was especially useful when I entered higher education.)

As for the reader who didn't like my mug, she may have been struggling with putting "educated" and "thought-provoking" together with my image.

I pulled out the correspondence folder today as I pondered how we would all be better off if we were less prickly, took what was useful from criticisms or barbs and left the rest -- understanding that the problems people have with us are more often than not problems they have with themselves.

Nothing we do can fix that.

They Will Kill You

 

I admire Zazie Beetz's chutzpah for taking on the bruising lead in Kirill Sokoloz's comedic guts-and-gore flick They Will Kill You, in which Beetz, an alt-cinema darling, plays a housekeeper in a swanky New York City apartment building that has a dark secret. Think Rosemary's Baby (1968) meets Hellraiser (1987).

Sokoloz wastes no time getting down to business and giving the audience what the movie poster promises -- a bloody Beetz kicking ass.

Beetz's Asia Reaves shows up for work on her first day and discovers the residents of the "Virgil" are out to get her. Yes, Virgil is the name of the poet who led Dante on his trip through Hell. But the tenants mistake Beetz's Asia Reaves for a defensive maid, which she most definitely isn't, and they pay dearly for assuming.

Asia is on a mission to find and rescue her younger sister Maria, (Myha'la), from whom she has been separated for the 10 years after the violent encounter that opens the picture. She tracked her sister to the Virgil with the help of a detective.

Asia is greeted by the creepily officious building manager Lilly (Patricia Arquette) and a coterie of tenants bearing unwanted gifts. In no time, heads are rolling, literally!

The cast of creeps -- which includes Heather Graham and Tom Felton -- seems to be having a blast with the outlandish doings that build to a crashing crescendo of viscera and goo. I expect some sophisticates might roll their eyes at the ridiculous brutality while admiring the camera work, film editing and thundering soundtrack.

They Will Kill You is a tidy 90-minutes of hellish havoc.

National Mockery

One of America's GROSS National Products is mocking others.

The executive uses mocking, derision and shaming regularly in his public statements -- I can't imagine what he's like the rest of the time. He uses that familiar tactic of gigging and baiting and teasing and seemingly daring the subject of the teasing to object. (What? Can't take a f***ing joke, Marco?)

Ever wanting to please the executive, MAGA nation has become pretty adept at mockery. The clown-face emoji is their default response to social media postings that are critical of the regime. (This might be programmed into the bots and imitated by the living trolls. Dunno.)

It kind of fits into evangelical sermonizing, too, when the unsaved and the fallen are denounced for their sinful ways. I've actually heard the saints mocking a denomination while attending a funeral service at a different church.

A more subtle part of this mocking, I think, is taking what belongs to another and twisting it to one's own purpose, like mangling a person's name -- "Sam" becomes "Spam" -- or parroting what a person says in response to being mocked.

This juvenile behavior doesn't require much effort from the mocker and, psychologists tell us, delivers an adrenaline rush of superiority, and, when done in a group, a sense of belonging. This is especially intoxicating for those suffering from feelings of inferiority.

It says a lot about a movement whose members are bound together by mockery.

It says a lot but nothing good.

Heated Rivalry

 

Canadian producer/writer/director/actor Jacob Tierney's Heated Rivalry set the streaming universe ablaze when it premiered last November, riding a wave of LGBTQ+ cinematic content that, based on audience and critical response, the public was ready for.

Tierney, the creative genius behind the irreverent Canadian treats Letterkenny (2016-2023) and Shoresy (2022-2023), returns to the hypermasculine world of hockey first explored in the latter series to tell very different stories of love and competition (and love of competition) in a fictionalized version of the NHL.

Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie star as hockey phenoms on the Montreal and Boston teams, respectively; Williams as Japanese-Canadian Shane Hollander, a charming and disarming Mama's boy, and Storrie as the arrogant Russian-import Ilya Rozanov, the son of a stern Russian oligarch. Both men are harboring sexuality secrets that they discover about each other in short order.

The two aces lead their teams through alternating championship seasons over several years, while meeting on the DL, as time and luck allows, for gymnastic romps in the hay. Tierney stages scorching trysts between the two impossibly handsome players -- the "heated" part of the series' cheeky title.

In the middle of the six-episode series, Tierney places the story of another player, Scott Hunter (the engaging François Arnaud), a struggling and closeted veteran player for New York whose game is suffering until he meets a handsome barista named Kip (a winning Robbie G.K.) and discovers what's been missing in his performance and in his life.

This episode introduces two of the series' most important and related narrative threads -- the need for truthtellers and the immutability of love. Tierney, who is openly gay, does not play fast and loose with "coming out" decisions. Rather, he lays out with clarity and compassion what each of the men sees as threats to owning their personal truths -- with the anticipated blows to their employment topping the lists. He walks the audience through the men's worlds, without judgment or condescension, weighing their fears, which the otherwise fearless Rozanov describes at one point as "terrifying."

Tierney places within each of these men's constellation of friends a truthteller, not coincidentally a female companion, who says what is needed, at the right time, and, perhaps most importantly, with the assurance that her support will not waiver. To me, these women (played by Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova, Nadine Bhabha and Sophie Nélisse) give voice to an eternal truth -- true love might be buried but it never dies.

And maybe, in the end, that's what the audience needed more than sex and heat.

Season 2 is expected to drop in April 2027.

Masking Make-over?

 

Maybe ICE agents just need a masking make-over.

A little splash of color?

No?

Lipstick on a pig, you say?

Backshop Memories

 

I was telling a friend that one of the best places at the daily newspaper back in the day, at least for me, was the composing room.

That was where all of the work that had gone on the previous 24 hours and before came together in a tangible way.

All the interviews, document-searching, scanning of police reports, note-taking in council meetings and court rooms, the locker-room interviews and press box score-keeping, the photographs and maps and, of course, acres and acres of ads, were slotted on big blue-line sheets that were reviewed by copy editors using blue pencils, corrected, photographed to scale, reviewed again and again by other editors, before being cleared for the presses.

The first edition papers would roll off and even then editors would read for problems. If they found an egregious error that needed fixing for the middle or final editions, it was done, but that would cost money so the error had to be substantial to warrant stopping the presses and re-plating. Otherwise, the error would be corrected the next day.

Being a part of this bookended my years in daily newspapering. I started as a part-time copy messenger on Saturdays and Sundays shuttling between the copy desk and the composing room, and my last tour at The State before leaving for the university was as one of several night editors.

There was a different energy at that hour, a more comprehensive vision for what the paper did, and I think a greater appreciation for the people who didn't get their names in print but saved many reputations by flagging problems that had slipped by the desk.

The composing room, which was radically transformed by technology, was the epitome of "team" for me. And I was enriched immeasurably by being a part of it back then.

Billy Sunday Schooling

 

Billy Sunday was an influential heartland evangelist whose message of temperance and holy living was embraced by millions who attended his revivals and tuned into his wireless broadcasts during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Sunday had been a baseball player for the Chicago Whites before converting to Christianity and giving up drinking, smoking, gambling and cussing.

His conversion to holy sobriety was a big part of his appeal as a preacher and boosted his prominence as a Prohibitionist in the 1910s. The record is not clear on how much actual "lobbying" Sunday did to get the Eighteenth Amendment passed in 1920, but it stands to reason that one of the most famous people in the country condemning the manufacture, sale and consumption of booze was a big help to Morris Sheppard, who wrote the Prohibition bills, and other congressional temperance leaders.

Sunday's longest-running revivals was right here in River City, Columbia, where nearly half-million came to hear the man.

Despite efforts by Sunday and his ilk, Prohibition didn't last. Human nature exerted itself in defiance of the law. Speakeasies and gin joints run by the Mob were everywhere and in numbers too great to police effectively.

Folks wanted hassle-free booze and legislators needed a revenue-generating alternative to taxing people already hurting from the Depression. The narrow pietism of conservative preachers was rejected, and Prohibition was laid to rest in 1933.

Billy Sunday himself was laid to rest two years later, at age 72, having lost much of his appeal and stature but still preaching to willing listeners here and there.

The injection of christianist sanctimony into politics today shows that "Sunday Schooling" from 100 years ago has yet to be learned.

Lee Atwater's MAGA Nation

We don't need the Epstein Files to tell us the executive is an abuser.

He gives us evidence every day that he is a chronic belittler and batterer.

He attacks and demoralizes, feigns good humor while he patronizes others, smashes personal and professional boundaries, and struts about like a preening rooster in a barnyard.

He demands flattery, prefers women as silent ornaments and accessories, but is clearly intimidated by other men, deferring to them at first but undermining and undercutting them whenever the urge strikes just to show who's the boss.

He imagines inflicting pain on others -- remember the "shove protesters roughly in patrol cars" line from his rallies? -- and ICE is a dream come true for someone who peppers his speech with references to pain.

Like other abusers, he's afraid of losing control of his victim, so he's concocting narratives that leave him blameless and shifts all of the problems to his victims.

His ego is so fragile that he can't imagine his victim taking up with someone else, so he trashes all others as weak and unsuitable and makes that classic abuser threat, "If I can't have you, nobody can." He will leave the victim a dispirited, battered, pitiful wreck. Traumatized and twitchy.

The executive is a nation abuser

Nation abuse

 

We don't need the Epstein Files to tell us the executive is an abuser.

He gives us evidence every day that he is a chronic belittler and batterer.

He attacks and demoralizes, feigns good humor while he patronizes others, smashes personal and professional boundaries, and struts about like a preening rooster in a barnyard.

He demands flattery, prefers women as silent ornaments and accessories, but is clearly intimidated by other men, deferring to them at first but undermining and undercutting them whenever the urge strikes just to show who's the boss.

He imagines inflicting pain on others -- remember the "shove protesters roughly in patrol cars" line from his rallies? -- and ICE is a dream come true for someone who peppers his speech with references to pain.

Like other abusers, he's afraid of losing control of his victim, so he's concocting narratives that leave him blameless and shifts all of the problems to his victims.

His ego is so fragile that he can't imagine his victim taking up with someone else, so he trashes all others as weak and unsuitable and makes that classic abuser threat, "If I can't have you, nobody can." He will leave the victim a dispirited, battered, pitiful wreck. Traumatized and twitchy.

The executive is a nation abuser

The High Table

 

In John Wick: Chapter 2, Gianna D'Antonio (Claudia Gerini), the recently elevated head of the Italian mob who succeeded her deceased father into that seat, is hosting an enormous celebration in Rome.

All manner of potentates are present, even Vatican representatives. At one point, she meets with an African crime leader named Akoni (Chuk Iwuji), who challenges her taking of property that belonged to his people.
D'Antonio sluffs off the man's objection, saying the property was given willingly.
"With a knife at their throats," he says.
She corrects him. The knife was for their children.
"They were only meant to watch."
She icily ends the meeting and invites Akoni to rejoin the party.
A few minutes after this exchange, D'Antonio, who has been marked for execution by her envious brother (Riccardo Scamaracio), ends her life cutting her wrists before John Wick (Keanu Reeves) can put a bullet in her head.
Wick asks her why she was committing suicide, and she said she'd always lived on her own terms and would die on her own terms.

Throughout the five chapters of the Wick series, the taking of life is referred to as part of the business operated by the international criminal cartel called the High Table, which has its own laws and currency. All of those working for the High Table -- who pledge to serve and be of service -- are assets -- at once well-compensated and dispensable.

While it is foolish to search for real-world applications in every movie narrative, it is tough not to see the coldness of this country's present political enterprises through a "Wickian" lens, especially the targeting of the most vulnerable to provoke fear, intimidate, force compliance, silence resistance.

I think those reels of thousands and thousands of air travelers waiting hour after hour to board planes have the effect of intimidating non-travelers -- those of us who might feel powerless to force warring parties to agree.

I think we are simply meant to watch. 

The Typing Pool

 

The typing pool originated around the start of the 20th century, reflecting the American economy's shift from agricultural and industrial sectors toward finance, information and services.

Large banks of typewriters and typists were assembled to centralize the work of creating documents needed in the public and private sectors.

Typing classes were common in schools in the '20s and '30s, and many young women were encouraged to learn to type so that they might find employment; jobs were gender-normed until WWII. (Remember the possibilities the typewriter held for dear, sweet paralytic Laura Wingfield in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie?)

Typewriting as a career option was replaced by word-processing in the '70s and '80s and dedicated word-processors (I spent a few months employed as such the summer before started graduate school) eventually were replaced by user-friendly personal computers. Folks did their own composing with the help of early forms of spell-checking and a Merriam-Webster and a printer.

Today, AI stands poised to take over not just the transferal of handwritten notes on legal pads to onionskin and parchment -- like the ladies in the typing pool -- but the entire compositional process.

I fully anticipate ...

careers to evaporate,

jobs to disappear,

creative impulses to wither, and

brains to atrophy.

A Grave New World!

Patrick Davis, South Carolina Poet Laureate

 

I didn't know Patrick Davis, South Carolina's new poet laureate, so I did some hunting.

Born in Tennessee, reared in Camden, educated at the University of South Carolina, lives and works in Nashville now. One of Davis's many songs is titled "Black Jesus," which he wrote with another Nashville performer, Channing Wilson. Black Jesus was recorded by Jason Eady for his self-titled album back in 2017.

The song calls to mind "Rueben James," which was recorded by Kenny Rogers and the Fifth Edition back in the late '60s. That song was written by Alex Harvey and Barry Etris.

Both Black Jesus and Rueben James are about cross-racial friendships -- one between workmates and the other between an abandoned child and the man who became his guardian.

I think both songs try to narrow the distance between the races by focusing on individual cases. I think the world is certainly better for them having been written, but I also think the complex dynamics of the men who are at the center of the stories and the worlds they inhabit are difficult, if not impossible, to accurately reflect in 3 minutes.

Still, the world is richer because the songs exist.

Black Jesus

Well, I was eighteen workin' on a road crew in Georgia

And he was a Vietnam vet from Tennessee

He held the posts while I drove the hammer

Rain or shine, side by side, five days a week

And he taught me the blues

And I'd sing for him old Hank Williams tunes

And he'd say, "Boy, the only difference between us

Is your white and my black Jesus"

Well the pay, it was barely legal

And I wasted mine on cigarettes and booze

His went to his woman and his children

And the rest he'd bet on anything that moves

And he taught me the blues

And I'd sing for him old Hank Williams tunes

And he'd say, "Boy, the only difference between us

Is your white and my black Jesus"

Well, I awoke last night to the sound of thunder

And my mind drifted back to that old man

Oh, and I ain't seen him since I left Georgia

Oh, but something tells me we'll meet again

And he taught me the blues

And I'd sing for him ol' Willie Nelson tunes

And he'd say, "Boy, the only difference between us

Is your white and my black Jesus"

When we meet again they'll be nothing between us

It'll just be him, and me, and Jesus

Project Hail Mary II

 

I do hope those who venture out to see Project Hail Mary will let what the picture says about devotion and sacrifice wash over them -- not just because it's timely, but because it's "timeless."

Reluctant astronaut Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), whose self-negation is tested by the mind-boggling challenge facing him, finds his previously untapped heroic gene as he searches among the stars for a cure for sure interspecies destruction with an alien scientist who, craftily enough, doesn't look even remotely humanoid but whose natural generosity and benevolence ignite Grace's own.

It's a wonderful, nearly brilliant conceit that, to maybe be a tad more judgmental than is needed, eclipses the televised sanctimony that is long on "talk" and short on "action."

Nowhere and at no time does the film mention John 15:13 -- there is no greater love than to sacrifice oneself to save another -- because the idea does not begin and end with the Teacher. And I welcome that notion.

Project Hail Mary -- I think the irony of the title being a prayer for intercession in the face of impossible odds is deliberate -- is a testament to conscious, active, genuine goodness that extends beyond the smallness of religious sects and their creeds and confessions.

And I say "Amen" to that.

Project Hail Mary

 

One's enjoyment of the Phil Lord and Christopher Miller space thriller Project Hail Mary will depend on one's appetite for (1) existential threats to planetary survival told as an intergalactic road movie and for (2) everybody's favorite Ken doll, Ryan Gosling. I'm pretty much a sucker for both.

Gosling stars as a Dr. Ryland Grace, a molecular biologist teaching middle school, who is "recruited" by an enigmatic scientist, Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), to be part of a project team to find out the cause of a celestial anomaly, called the Petrova line, that is robbing the sun of its energy.

The audience meets Grace as he awakens from a years-long coma, deep in space and approaching an unfamiliar star. Grace's story is revealed in flashback, as his memory returns, and he puts together the nature of his mission and what he must do to deliver vital information to the Earth, light-years away.

As he nears his destination, Grace encounters a gigantic spaceship being piloted by an alien being with far superior knowledge and capabilities, despite looking like a stone crab. Using human inqenuity, they learn to communicate. Grace names the alien Rocky, for obvious reasons, and they begin to pool their knowledge to chart a course to gather data and, as Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz) says, "save the stars."

Much of Project Hail Mary, which is based on the novel by Andy Weir, is about the mystery of the matter called "astrophage," star eater. The rest is about how having a common purpose binds spirits together, levels differences and puts a face on a universal concept called "love."

Pillion

 

Writer/director Harry Lighton's Pillion is a steamy BDSM tale of a handsome, taciturn biker named Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) and a retiring but lonely parking patrol officer named Colin (Harry Melling) that manages to do much more than titillate and unnerve.

Those open to the rigid-then-shifting dynamic between these young men -- one a chilly monolith and the other a wounded ego -- might discover universal truths about the intertwining of identity and need.

That is, Lighton is proposing that we often become what we must to get what we want -- once we discover what that is.

Pillion, which is the name for the passenger seat on a motorbike, introduces us to Ray's tribe of dominants and their submissives in the South England town of Bromley without judgment or the gaze of the non-BDSM community. He makes clear these men are willing participants in humiliation, and, in fact, they are expressing a variety of love, even though Ray insists "this is not what this is about."

We also get to know Colin's loving and hugely supportive parents, mother Peggy (Lesley Sharp) and father Pete (Douglas Hodge), who are thrilled their younger son has found someone. But they quickly grow concerned about Ray's seeming lack of openness. Peggy, who is terminally ill, is worried that her son is being mistreated by someone he barely knows and whom she doesn't know at all. At a get-acquainted dinner, a surprising concession from the congenitally withholding Ray, Peggy confronts her son's friend, who responds by telling her to mind her business.

Fissures eventually develop in the relationship, leading to an ultimatum that both Ray and Colin regret.

No, Pillion's storyline, graphic nudity, and explicit depictions of sexual intercourse make it decidedly NOT for general audiences. However, looking beyond the leather and chains, one might find a relatable story about the lengths to which people will go to find "love" or something that approximates it.

Sirât

 

I was not prepared for Oliver Laxe's intensely absorbing and devastating film Sirât, which has been nominated for an Oscar for Best International Feature.

Set in the desert regions of Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania, Sirât tells the story of a Spanish father, Luis, and his young son, Esteban, (Sergi López and Bruno Núñez Arjona, respectively) who are looking for their daughter/ sister. They believe she is attending a rave in a barren expanse of sand and rock in Morocco.

As father and son wander about the camp, asking ravers if they've seen the girl in a flier they are handing out, propulsive dance music throbs, bodies sway and twitch, and the audience is introduced to a "family" of roving ravers -- Steff, Josh, Jade, Begui and Tonin -- real-life street performers, artists and roustabouts playing themselves.

The ravers tell Luis and Esteban of another rave happening deep in the desert, quite a distance from there. Father and son ask to come along, as daughter/sister might be there. The ravers are reluctant, thinking of the treacherous road that lie ahead. But when the camp is dispersed by soldiers as part of a military evacuation, the ravers flee in the buses, followed by father and son in their minivan.

Unease creeps into the picture in the early minutes, mainly because we're not sure why the daughter is missing. We're not sure if Luis is uncertain or ashamed. This makes the subsequent perils even more unsettling and confounding. When sudden and horrific events happen, audiences might find themselves falling into despair, unable to see anything but dust and emptiness.

Sirât is beautifully filmed and the music rattling and thumping techno has been nominated for an Academy Award for sound. The picture contains many messages -- love and family, life's purpose, music as transformer and anesthetic.

But, to me, it is mostly about the value we assign to others and what those values say about us.

Private in Public

 

While waiting for my car to be serviced this morning, I was among a captive audience of seven or eight people within earshot of a conversation between two women who, it appeared, were strangers to one another.

A sympathetic comment after a big yawn was the opening salvo for a flood of stories about troubled sleep ("I didn't want to get out of bed this morning!"), family drama ("I don't understand what they're doing!"), darling grandchildren ("They're my heart!") and the grands' seemingly clueless parents ("He did wrong, but he's my son, so I have to back him up!").

I had taken a book to read but struggled to stay focused as the ladies shared all manner of family business -- pending divorces, children being used as weapons, the sanctity of widowhood, God's providence, etc.

One lady recounted how her daughter-in-law put news of her failing marriage on Facebook and complained when the husband's cousins weighed in. ("She had no business putting it out there!")

The service department was overrun this morning, so the ladies had lots of time to share and commiserate.

The sociologist in me wondered why it was so easy for them to "pour the tea" as they did.

Was it the anonymity of the customer lounge, where people also gab loudly on their phones?

Did these ladies enjoy the attention from the rest of us that their conversation pulled?

What would their families say if they knew Grandma was telling strangers about them?

This being "private in public" is nothing new, but it feels different, like folks need even MORE validation and connection than they did in the past.

Which, if true, is surprising, considering how pervasive social media "connections" are today.

But, on the other hand, maybe social media "connections" aren't authentic and leave folks wanting more -- like being six feet away.

TP USA

I see some states are trying to force Turning Point USA into colleges with the expressed intention of bolstering student character.  

I suspect this move is to promote that group's agenda and groom students for the regime's nationalist enterprise.

Frankly, I'm conflicted about this. Not on the leveraging of a state to push TP USA on campuses; that's a non-starter for me.

I'm torn between letting TP USA give it a go and die on the vine as we'd hope and actively protesting the group's move. The First and Fourteenth amendments loom over barring the club entirely.

And yet I can imagine TP being used as a screening tool for future employment, kind of like Greek Letter Organizations have been networks into the middle-class for college grads. Some fraternities are sustained by prosperous and well-positioned alums who identify "worthy" junior members for employment in their companies and firms. 

It's not a stretch for me to imagine TP USA using campus chapters in this way, handing out jobs in the public and private sectors to junior members who talk the talk and walk the walk.

Of course, equal employment legislation helped cut through closed networking systems, offering those who had been excluded access to those posts. 

The executive likes a closed, controlled system, which is why DEI was attacked and dismantled.

International Showtime

TV babies of a certain age might remember International Showtime, which ran on NBC in the early-to-mid '60s. 

Don Ameche, an actor about whom I knew nothing at the time, would introduce the various acts from locations around the world, mostly Europe. I especially enjoyed the circuses, and the white-faced Pierrot clowns in their pointed hats. 

I think the sketches were in French or Italian, but they were wonderful, and unlike Northeast D.C. where I was living. 

Watching International Showtime was transporting, kind of magical. The vast world was brought into the living room, through our sometimes snowy TV set -- Marshall McLuhan's legendary "global village." 

Looking back I see that from 7:30 to 8:30 on Fridays, the world -- which was roiling with war and social injustice -- was, well, good.

How Soon is Now?

Friend Chuck Twardy introduced me to British post-punk band The Smiths back in the Reagan era and my ardor never waned over all these years, even after the group dissolved.

The band's songwriters -- guitarist Johnny Marr and singer Morrissey (birth name Steven Patrick Morrissey) -- are credited with pushing the boundaries of rock music with their rich melodic lines and lyrics about longing and isolation that are by turns plaintive and humorous. The band's following was serious and sizable.

Both Marr and Morrissey continue to record, with Marr's output surpassing Morrissey's in both style and substance -- and in quantity.

Still, as The Smiths, Marr and Morrissey wrote enduring songs in the indie rock vein. Among their more impactful is the lamentation "How Soon is Now?" It certainly is my favorite of their catalogue.

I recall being in Seattle with a friend, ready to ring in the new millennium. We wanted to be present in a tech capital if computer intelligence went kablooey.

While waiting in a night club to ring out 1999, I heard the needle drop on How Soon is Now? What an inspired choice, I thought, as I watched patrons flood onto the dance floor.

The song is about our universal need for human connection -- a valuable reminder then as we were worried that our cyber intelligence would evaporate.  

But it's also valuable for us today -- maybe more so -- as we stare down Artificial Intelligence, waiting to see who blinks first.

(Click photo for song)

Dairy Queen ad and Media Literacy

 

Back when I was in the classroom, I laid a foundation for the formal study of media messages by including this Dairy Queen ad from 1960, a period of sufficient distance that its products can be looked at dispassionately while maintaining social, political and historical significance.

I talk about why the ad was created (to maintain / increase share of the fairly new but lucrative fast-food market) and where it appeared (print publications), noting in most instances that there was accompanying text ("ad copy") to make the pitch to consumers.

I talk about the bright colors tying the elements together and the kinds of feelings psychologists tell us yellows, blues, greens and reds prompt in most of us.

I talk about the "story" or "narrative" in this ad -- a gathering of a dozen or so folks on a sunny day, probably a weekend, outside of the city, to get ice cream, as that is mainly what DQ was known for at the time, denoted by the soft-serve cone in the sign.

I also point out -- though many students are well ahead of me on this point -- that all of the human subjects in the ad appear to be white, dressed in what would have been conventional middle-class, color-coordinated apparel -- collared shirts and skirts -- and driving vehicles because that's how you got to DQ in the burgeoning suburbs in the Eisenhower years. They are neat, well-groomed, with bright smiles that suggest they are in good health.

I talk about how the choices of color, subjects and location were deliberate and intended to connect with a target audience, whom advertisers hoped would see themselves either actually or ideally in that space, in that story.

I talk about how media messages became more diversified to reflect greater social and economic equality, but the "stories" and "spaces" remained essentially separate with ads targeting blacks set in cities ("urban markets") and ads directed at whites set in locales outside of the city.

I point out that today, or until quite recently, media messages that were NOT inclusive were not reflective of real-world spaces and stories that have been created in the 70s years since the DQ ad. I tell the students that inclusion and diversification of media messages has not only been sound and realistic but they've been profitable for these multi-billion dollar businesses.

I still believe all of this, but I've been wondering lately if this message would be stifled in academies of higher education in 2026?