August Wilson's Century Cycle -- Gem of the Ocean

 

August Wilson seems to have had a lot on his mind when he wrote Gem of the Ocean -- history, religion, folkways, maybe even politics, but most assuredly America's tradition of racial oppression and exploitation. Maybe that's why his major characters have such enormous speaking parts ... lots and lots of words, lots and lots of stories. Is it too much?

In Act One, Aunt Ester describes a dream in which Solly was leading a group of men in a ship across the water but the ship capsized and the men were lost. While this image connects with Solly's past as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, it also, because of the fate of the passengers, suggests to me a connection with the mythological figure of Charon, who conducted souls into the netherworld. It is curious that Aunt Ester asks to be taken back across the water. Why? Solly, of course, is determined to get his sister out of Alabama where white folks "have gone crazy." A fateful decision that maybe Ester foresaw.

Solly: "What good is freedom if you can't do nothing with it? I seen many a man die for freedom but he didn't know what he was getting. If he had known he might have thought twice about it." (Act One, Scene Two). August Wilson does not make it easy. His characters are complex and seemingly conflicted. Solly's determination to free his sister from a crushing existence in Alabama seems to suggest life two generations after Emancipation was not significantly better for blacks. Is he suggesting that life in bondage would be preferable to impoverishment?

Wilson describes Black Mary as Aunt Ester's protegee, which to me is an odd description. Ester's wisdom comes from her age (or agelessness). Black Mary is described as a young woman in her 20s, which suggests she did not make the crossing from enslavement to freedom. She seems to be defined most by the house and her relationship to Ester and her brother Caesar, with whom she differs not only in age but in temperament. She also differs from Citizen Barlow in that she's found some piece in loneliness.

"One after the other they come and they go. You can't hold on to none of them. They slip through your hands. They use you up and you can't hold them. They all the time taking till it's gone. They ain't tried to put nothing to it. They ain't got nothing in their hand. They got nothing to add to it." (Act One, Scene Four) Black Mary doesn't seem to be bitter, just resigned to the emptiness.

August Wilson's Century Cycle -- Joe Turner's Come and Gone

 

Joe Turner's Come and Gone is as dense in character storytelling as Gem of the Ocean but it feels a little less mystical, despite Bynum's "shining man" visions. I love the characters and because there are more female characters than Gem, the play has a different feel or texture to me, more romantic, perhaps.

“August had an incredible ear and he wrote the dialogue the way he heard it, adding his own magic touch as well. His characters are people who paint with language. They speak, in a sense, almost poetically by nature. One must honor and pay attention to the ways and style of our grandparents who migrated from the south where they were “southern colored people” and when they came north the only thing that changed was the location. In August Wilson’s writing there is no time to comment on what you say just respect the cadence, the couplets and triplets. These people have incredible wit, honesty and integrity. To survive in this country chasing the American dream it was imperative. Sometimes it takes three sentences to express one passionate, urgent, thought. It’s mellifluous, poetic and never pondered. It is part of the beauty of who we are descendants of the African griots; the keepers of our history, our culture, who never let us forget the glory of who we descended from. That’s August Wilson.” - Ruben Santiago-Hudson

Bynum's first monologue about finding his song is vital to understanding the world that Wilson is creating in Joe Turner. Bynum might very well be mad but the notion of an individual's song is a part of many native people's folklore. The monologue's power and artistry is reflected in the number of people who have recorded it on YouTube. This is one of the best presentations I have seen.

Mattie: Make him come back to me. Make his feet say my name on the road. I don't care what happens. M ake him come back.

Bynum: What's your man's name?

Mattie: He go by Jack Carper. He was born in Alabama then he come to West Texas and find me and we come here. Been here three years before he left. Say I had a curse prayed on me and he started walking down the road and ain't never come back. Somebody told me, say you can fix things like that. (Act One, Scene One)

Seth and Bertha Holly's boarding house seems to be a port for the disconnected, lost or those searching for others. That Great Migration from the South was not always direct and certain. As Mattie suggests, here route was much or circuitous and now that her mate has moved on she's not sure of her fate. Wilson's play overflows with the anxiety that accompanies rootlessness.

The characters Herald Loomis and his daughter Zonia are fascinating inventions who invoke much contemplation on the nature of the fatherhood -- at least, Wilson's perspective of it. Loomis and daughter arrive at the boarding house looking for his wife and his daughter's mother from whom they were separated on their trek north. Loomis seems to grow more desperate as the play progresses, convinced his Martha is nearby and eager to find her because their daughter is rapidly becoming a woman.

Loomis: Look at you. You growing too fast. Your bones getting bigger everyday. I don't want you getting grown on me. Don't you get grown on me too soon. We gonna find your mamma. She around here somewhere. I can smell her. You stay on around the house now. Don't you go nowhere.

August Wilson's Century Cycle -- Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

 

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is the play in the American Century Cycle that is not set in Pittsburgh. The action takes place in a recording studio where the great blues singer Ma Rainey is scheduled to record. Wilson's Rainey is bigger than life and rules over the proceedings even when she's not on stage.

Wilson seems to have special affection for quirky characters in whom he invests another level of moral messaging. In Ma Rainey, the character of Sylvester, Ma's stuttering driver and purported nephew from Arkansas, plays counterpoint to Levee's brash vanity. It might very well be that the ambling and affable Sylvester is actually a pawn in Ma's plan to keep everyone uneasy, to show who's boss. "All right boys, you done seen the rest now I'm gonna show you the best. Ma Rainey's gonna show you her black bottom."

Ma Rainey's sexual orientation is handled as subtext in the play and adds a level of tension between the queen and the ambitious Levee.

Cutler: Nigger, don't you know that's Ma's gal?

Levee: I don't care whose gal it is. I ain't done nothing to her. I just talk to her like I talk to anybody else.

Cutler: Well, that being Ma's gal, and that being that boy's gal, is one and two different things. The boy is liable to kill you... but you' ass gonna be out there scraping the concrete looking for a job if you messing with Ma's gal.

August Wilson's Century Cycle -- Fences

 

My sense is Wilson's Fences won the Pulitizer Prize because its story is more classically tragic than his other more mystical and declamatory works -- which might have appealed to Pulitzer judges. It is, in many ways, as great as Miller's Death of a Salesman, whose sad and self-deceived titular character shares much in common with Wilson's Troy Maxson -- a man haunted and frustrated, able to accept his own failings while abjuring those of his offspring. Rose's speech at the end is just as stirring as Linda Loman's declaration in Death that "attention must be paid."

Wilson's Fences, like others in the series, begins in medias res, with Troy and his sidekick, the earnest Jim Bono, getting off work. Troy's got a few things in the works and needs an audience, which his friend is eager to provide. By the end of Scene One, Wilson has introduced us to Troy's universe (he actually describes all of the characters in terms of their relationship to Troy), including his absent brother Gabriel. When Gabriel makes his appearance in the Second Act, those familiar with Wilson's universe understand Gabe's a messenger, the latest in a line of mystics, with one foot planted on the earth and the other in the spirit world. Gabe's battle with the hell hounds, which seem not to be molesting him but those he loves, is a foreboding classical theme made even more ominous when paired with Troy's tales of wrestling with the devil -- the devil of his own bitter and grasping nature.

Troy and Cory Maxson is the first staged father-son relationship Wilson has presented in the Century Series, and it's quite a study. Troy, an undereducated trash man, pours his regret and frustration on top of Cory, a young man who is puzzled by his father's animosity toward his desire to play football.

Troy: ... You go on and get your book-learning so you can work yourself up in that A&P or learn how to fix cars or build houses or something, get you a trade. That way you have something can't nobody take away from you. You go on and learn how to put your hands to some good use. Beside's hauling people's garbage."

It's not until the family is ready to lower Troy into the ground that Cory begins to understand the pain his father was in and to forgive him and his faults.

Wilson juxtaposes two powerful scenes in Act Two to show Troy's dishonorable fall -- Bono's departure and the fight with Cory. The two scenes have starkly different tones -- Bono's leaving his friendship with Troy is graceful, like the guileless man who tried to be Troy's conscience earlier, but the battle with Cory is fierce and bitter, like the father and son who have never really understood one another. Both are tragic and devastating events in the life of a man who's claimed to stare down the devil. At the end of the scene, Troy stands again daring Satan to come at him. He's finished the fence but, alas, it neither keeps love in nor does it keep harm out.

August Wilson's Century Cycle -- The Piano Lesson

 

The "lesson" of The Piano Lesson is learning the difference between value and price. Berniece and her brother, Boy Willie, view the piano with equal measures of devotion and sincerity. It is this sincerity -- and the struggle between value and price -- that makes the battle between the siblings so powerful and compelling an d won Wilson his first Pulitizer Prize.

When Wilson introduces Berniece's suitor Avery late in the first scene of The Piano Lesson, he describes him as "honest and ambitious" and one who is finding opportunities in the city that others aren't. That Avery is also a preacher and prophet is consistent with the playright's use of seers as guides for the other characters. Avery's description of the dream he said led to his calling is important, I feel, because it establishes, to whatever degree for audience members, his pastoral role and the important task that lies ahead for him as they try to expel Sutter's ghost, the residue of enslavement and oppression, from the house.

Near the end of Act 1, Boy Willie explains to Berniece and Doaker why he's so intent on selling the piano. "You can sit up here and look at that piano for the next hundred years and it's just gonna be a piano. You can't make more than that. Now I want to get Sutter's land with that piano. I get Sutter's land and I can go down and cash in the crop and get my seed. As long as I got the land and the seed then I'm alright." For Wilson's purpose, Sutter, of course, represents more than a dead white man. He epitomizes all that was taken from blacks in the South. And all that might be reclaimed.

The second half of Act Two Scene Three is the late night encounter between Lymon and Berniece, two bodies orbitting around Boy Willie, uncertain of their future but somehow, briefly, drawn together. Lymon is decked out in a suit he bought from Wining Boy and Berniece is in her night clothes. He's been outmanned by his friend while out on the town and comes to Berniece's alone with a bottle of cheap perfume and a little bit of hope. It's a touching scene, one of the tenderest Wilson crafted for this powerful play.

Wilson closes the play with the characters in a struggle with the terrible past. Boy Willie battles the ghost of the man he may or may not have pushed into a well and Berniece calls to her ancestors to give him strength to fight. The sound of train pulling in evokes the story of the Yellow Dog and the souls seemingly trapped for eternity in it. Wilson weaves together stark realism with the mystical and the fantastic, suggesting that the spirit world is never, ever far away.

August Wilson's Century Cycle -- Seven Guitars

Wilson's Seven Guitars opens with a funeral and ends with a murder. Death is always present in his plays; ghosts linger in houses and in the minds of the characters. Because of the play's structure, we know that the love affair between Vera and Floyd is doomed. So, the play's mystery is not whether she'll go with Floyd. To me, the mystery is which of the forces at work will prevent it.

Scene Two of Seven Guitars features the familiar duet between a needy, ambitious man and the woman he feels will make him whole. Floyd and Vera do a two-step of flirtation and recrimination, with Vera making it clear that missing her man's touch, after he's abandoned her for another woman, is a pain she doesn't want to revisit. The end of the scene shows her sweetening a bit but there's still a lot of miles between Pittsburgh and Chicago, Floyd's Promised Land.

The character of Hedley continues in the tradition of the hoodoo-mystics Wilson features so prominently in his work. Of the seven characters, Hedley, an amateur herbalist and chicken processor, is the one living closest to the earth, seems at once the most grounded and, as the audience discovers in short order, the maddest. The fateful misunderstanding that closes the play seems doubly tragic -- as two beloved characters clash, needlessly, lowers a dark pall over Hedley.

August Wilson's Century Cycle -- Two Trains Running

 

Two Trains Running is Wilson’s most insular play, with the action confined to the front area of small diner run by the angry and fiery Memphis. The patrons who wander in and out bring with them the worries of a world in the midst of violent change and never-ending uncertainty for blacks. Once again, Wilson has committed much of the pain felt by African-Americans to a young man, Sterling, who wants more than he can achieve and can’t seem to get out of his own way.

In many ways, Risa is like the other damaged women from Wilson's century: Wary of the men they find themselves surrounded by and shouldering pain and bearing scars. But unlike the others whose scars are hidden, Risa has etched hers onto her legs with a razor, perhaps as reminders of past troubles but most certainly to turn away the pestering men who frequent the diner. Though Sterling is intent on winning her, Risa is not at all open to his advances. She extends herself to no one except Hambone, another damaged soul whom she protects from the others, and the unseen Prophet Samuel, a Daddy Grace-style evangelist who has shown her scripture and holy attention. She proves to be one of Wilson's more inscrutable creations.

In Seven Guitars, Wilson opens the play just after the burial of Floyd Barton, the central charater in that story of hope refracted through disappointment and deceit. Two Trains Running closes with a funeral. Neither funeral is staged but both represent the second of the two trains all of us must ride -- one for life and the other for death, according to Wilson. Hambone's death is coincident with the departure of Prophet Samuel, a larger than life community figure who never appears on stage. The mechanics of the prophet's funeral consumes much of the characters' attention. Wilson's mad herald, Hambone, makes frequent appearances throughout the play, reciting his sad refrain --"He gonna give me my ham." And his sudden disappearance introduces an unsettling and foreboding air. Hambone boards death's train unceremoniously, in his sleep, having never received from life what he felt he deserved. And, as is common in Wilson's tragic world, another character's closing act of rash foolishness guarantees that he himself will be denied.

August Wilson's Century Cycle -- Jitney

In Jitney, August Wilson displays a weary concision not present in his earlier works. The last play in the Century Cycle to be completed, Jitney contains the familiar Wilson themes -- men trying to become more than they are and pushing against forces that appear fixed on denying them. Noticeably absent are the mystic undercurrents, the lengthy monologues and the narrative complexity that made his earlier works much more epic in vision and execution. Jitney is a simple and direct story of "urban renewal," displacement, resistance and loss. For some, it is equal to others in the Cycle. But to others, myself include, it feels like a comparatively minor work, strong but delivering few fresh insights.

Wilson confines Jitney's action to the dispatch office where the drivers receive calls for service. The constant entrances and exits of the jitney drivers keeps the action in the shop connected to an off-stage world. Toward the end of the first scene, Youngblood enters to report that a neighborhood resident, Cigar Annie, has been evicted and is standing in the street cursing mankind and flashing drivers. The woman never makes an appearance but seems to represent a kind of woman in Wilson's universe, one who has been so exploited and diminished by those around her that she's left without fear. As Doub says, "Ain't nothing wrong with Cigar Annie. They had her down in Mayview two or three times. They figure anybody cuss out God and don't care who's listening got to be crazy. They found out she got more sense than they do. That's why they let her go. She raising up her dress cause that's all anybody ever wanted from her since she was twelve years old. She say if that's all you want ... here it is."

Jitney's struggling couple Rena and Youngblood (Darnell) provide little of the romantic dynamism found in Wilson's other works. The tension between the two, Rena's insistence that Youngblood be a better provider for their child, is worsened by Turnbo's tireless tattling. While the destructive gossip is an hoary theatrical staple (The Children's Hour), it seems to me a device that's beneath Wilson's creative mettle and too meager to carry so much narrative weight.

August Wilson's Century Cycle -- King Hedley

King Hedley II opens with the death of the ancient sage Aunt Ester, introduced in Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean. In keeping with Wilson’s merging of the real and the mystical, Stool Pigeon announces she “died with her hand stuck to her head,” symbolizing the pain and sadness she’s witnessed over her 366 years. The madman, like his forbears in classical theater, was predicting that Ester’s sudden death was signaling even greater tumult. King and Mister, in particular, would be caught up in the maelstrom.

August Wilson's Century Cycle -- Radio Golf

 

With Radio Golf, Wilson closed out the Century Cycle with his most contained (and constrained ) work. Though the mysticism is absent, the narrative does not merge as many storylines and the romantic dynamic is muted, the play does provide a sonorous coda on Wilson's major theme of the clash between heritage and progress. The disaster that looms over Radio Golf's five characters appears to be more circumstantial, that is, more the result of negligence than racism -- although institutional racism is not too far in the wings. Some have described Radio Golf as the master playwright's most accessible play; it certainly isn't as richly bejeweled with history, folklore and philosophy. That's not to say it isn't profound and complex with Harmond Wilks standing for African American men who have aspired to greatness and been compromised by their own consciences. But, ironically, Wilks is not laid low by fate. He is actually lifted up by his grace and temperament and becomes, at least for me, a true Wilsonian hero.

 

 

The Real McCoys

TV babies of a certain age might remember the CBS sitcom The Real McCoys (1957-1963) that told the story of a West Virginia farm family that relocated to a family farm in California to make a go of it.

The series starred Oscar-winner Walter Brennan, Richard (later "Dick") Crenna, Kathy Nolan, child actors Lydia Reed and Michael Winkelman and one of the handful of Latino actors on television at the time, Tony Martinez. (The most prominent was undoubtedly Cuban-immigrant Desi Arnaz, who played Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy.)

Martinez played Mexican immigrant Pepino Garcia, a farmhand who was working toward American citizenship. Garcia came with the farm, no doubt settled during westward Depression Era migration. Martinez himself was a talented Puerto Rican musician/bandleader/actor who had studied at Juilliard.

In looking up Martinez's biography, I had forgotten, or never knew, that before the series ended in 1963, Pepino earned his citizenship and took the name McCoy, to become Pepino McCoy.

I'm sure at the time that plot point warmed the hearts of viewers, as it did Brennan's Grandpa McCoy, who believed in the American "Melting Pot."

Today, 60 years after, it probably strikes some folks as well-intended but wrongheaded and counter to the spirit of inclusion that allows immigrants to retain their cultural distinctiveness and not assimilate totally.

Something tells me MAGA nation would look at Pepino McCoy as "one of the good ones."

Martinez died in Las Vegas in 2002 at age 82.

 

Peter Cetera

         

Speaking of time passing ...

Remember the sorta chubby and scraggly bass player with the great voice in the brassy rock band Chicago 50 years ago, who turned into an MTV power pop pinup in the '80s?

Peter Cetera will be 82 this fall.

I can't imagine anybody else singing "25 or 6 to 4," "If You Leave Me Now," or "Glory of Love."

Cher

 

Pop culture fans of a certain age might know that Cheryl Sarkisian will be 80 next month.
They also might remember the big deal people made out of her plastic surgery back in the day.
No?
Me neither, because at one time folks were either too busy or too polite to call attention to the "work" people were having done.
But besides that, EVERYBODY loved Cher.
Her style.
Her grit.
Her voice.
Her laugh.

We loved that she BELIEVED in love after Sonny -- if just briefly. (Remember Allman and Woman?)
We loved her movies.
We loved her devotion to her trans son Chaz. (And we love that we have been able to watch Chaz come into his truth.)
We ached for Cher's unsuccessful attempts to help son Elijah Blue Allman battle his demons.
We loved that she admits to not being a perfect parent and that she keeps trying to do the right thing.
We love that she makes aging look easy ... even though it mostly certainly isn't.

The Drama

 

Norwegian writer/director Kristoffer Borgli's nervy nightmare The Drama is an emotional wringer about cuddly New York couple Emma and Charlie (Zendaya and Robert Pattinson) preparing for their wedding that coming weekend and wrestling with the ages-old question "Do I really know the person I'm about to marry?"

While testing the wedding menu with buddies Rachel and Mike (Alana Haim and Mamoudou Athie), Emma and Charlie play a booze-induced game of "the worst thing I've ever done."

As signaled in the film's no-spoilers trailer, it's Emma's youthful "indiscretion" that throws a wrench into the wedding plans, sends her into ocillating fits of panic and denial, Charlie into paroxysms of anxiety, and Mike and Rachel scurrying for cover and for the hills, respectively, which is a huge problem as they are the maid of honor and best man.

This tale of truth and trust put me in mind of Neil Simon's urban (and urbane) comedies of marriage and miscommunication, but with an added dose of post-modern misanthropy.

Borgli intersperses into this story hilariously disorienting passages that may or may not represent reality, but the characters' dreams or wishes. The message? Take nothing for granted.

I suspect the cagey director foreshadowed the picture's sweet but murky last reel in the film's early scene when Charlie admits to Emma he had not really read the book she was carrying on the day they met. And so on that foundation of dishonesty The Drama rests.

The Last Supper

 

Dali's Last Supper (1955) is as different from Da Vinci's (1495-1498) as one might get, considering they representational paintings of an event that nobody actually describes in any great detail.

According to the biblical account of the supper, there was Jesus and the 12 (Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code makes a case for 13) and bread and wine in the upper room of a residence of a good man whom Jesus may or may not have known personally, but who gave the room to the Teacher when Jesus asked for it.

All four gospels tell of the meal, with Matthew, Mark and Luke being similar in setting it at Passover, and John's departing from that chronology and the events that took place. Still, a supper begins the weekend that is central to Christian beliefs.

Even though the Last Supper has been a common element in Christian worship for millennia, sects vary in how they conduct it. Some set it at the center of weekly worship, some observe it once a month, some teach the literal changing of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, while others hold that it is only figurative. Some don't practice communion at all.

Not all church historians and theologians agree that the Last Supper actually took place, but maybe that doesn't matter.

Both Dali (1904-1989) and Da Vinci (1452-1519) were born into Catholic families, reared in that tradition, but began to explore different aspects of the religion later, moving beyond conventional understandings of faith and worship into mysticism and other esoteric beliefs.

Da Vinci's rendering, which is in Milan, is one of about a dozen painted during a time when the Church was commissioning such art as part of its mission of taking the good news to masses, most of whom could not read.

And, if I had to guess, I would say Dali's painting, which hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is a depiction of the Last Supper as an abstraction about humanity and divinity and sacrifice.

And that's what Easter is all about, right?

Multiple Maniacs (1970)

 

Midway through his 1970 tour de "farce" Multiple Maniacs, John Waters -- the filmmaker who gave the term "bad taste" a bad name and made millions doing it -- stages a fantasy passage that juxtaposes the crucifixion with a sexual encounter in a church pew.

The scene features Waters' regular cast members Divine and Mink Stole and is clearly meant to push every button an audience member might have about religion, especially Catholicism, and sex, especially that between members of the same sex, in this case two women -- which itself is being parodied because Divine (1945-1988) was an out gay man who almost always appeared in drag in Waters' pictures.

The producer/director/writer/editor no doubt called up a bunch of his friends in Baltimore and asked them if they would like to be in a movie. He couldn't pay them but he might be able to scrounge up some money for cans of tuna and Wonder bread and maybe some pot and coke. They'd have to be cool with profanity and nudity and some political commentary. The "maniacs" who said "yes" are the main cast members.

David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Edith Massey and Rick Morrow are among the Waters regulars appearing as sideshow "freaks" who perform acts of gross indecency -- licking telephones? -- for the neighborhood squares, who gather in the tents and watch transfixed, carping at the "perverts." At the end of the show, Divine robs the audience of their valuables, and she and the "freaks" skip town with the loot. On to their next caper.

But Madam Divine, a narcissistic diva, is showing signs of paranoia and growing penchant for violence. Rather than just stealing from the suckers, she now wants to kill them. She's going mad and everyone around her is in danger. Eventually, Divine snaps and turns into a remorseless marauder.

Yes, it's absurd, or is it?

To cavil about the film's amateurish quality -- no budget for sets and props or to pay actors who could deliver a professional reading of their lines -- might be missing the point. Or, maybe the fact this picture -- one of Waters' early features -- IS so cheap and bizarre and gross IS the point. Its existence was and is a comment on cultural and cinematic norms, and that, children, seems to be Waters' intention here.
 

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