Maine Event

Yesterday, voters in Maine voted to strip marriage rights from gays and lesbians, which had been granted by the passage of a law in May. Maine's version of California's woeful Proposition 8, which rejected gay marriage in last year's general election, was backed by the usual suspects, including the National Organization for Marriage, of the infamous "Gathering Storm" ad. Pretty pathetic.

It's time to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The notion that this crucial civil rights issue should be left to the voters of each state to decide is ludicrous. What would have happened if we had allowed each state to decide when to grant civil rights to blacks? If there had been no Civil Rights Act?

Maybe someone can explain to me - slowly and using small words, because I'm a bit dim - how this is different? DOMA, and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" with it, enshrined prejudice in law. It's time to move on and grant to LGBT people the equality they are owed under our Constitution. If some people in the country don't like it, tough. Change is hard, but this change is inevitable, so we might as well get used to it, and get on with it.

Allowing gays and lesbians to marry under civil law will strengthen families, not weaken them. It will help children, not harm them. It will have no impact on religious freedom in the U.S. whatsoever. To oppose these civil rights is to be an opponent of civil rights, period. It is shameful, it is irrational, it is wrong.

The Rock

30 Rock came back for a fourth season on Thursday, getting lower ratings than the previous season's opener. It was not the greatest episode of the show, but a solid, good one and, besides, they have set the bar impossibly high. British sitcoms get 12 shows a season, like the shows on HBO and Showtime. How Tina Fey and company manage to keep their brilliantly wacky, razor-sharp and caustic show as funny as it is, week after week, is something of a miracle. What do Americans want from their TV shows? People complain that the characters on Rock aren't "likable." That's a criticism? How did Seinfeld last so long then? Or All in the Family? Or any reality TV show?

I think maybe Rock is just too inside-show-business for a mainstream audience, and way, way too smart. I do not watch every comedy show on TV - though I've started watching a couple of promising new shows this season, Community and Modern Family - but I would sure like to see a funnier sitcom than 30 Rock. I doubt one exists right now. It ain't Parks and Recreation, though that show is picking up some steam in its second season. It ain't The Office, which peaked three or four season ago, in my opinion.

From what I understand, the best drama on TV, Mad Men, also doesn't get great ratings. This season has been Sopranos good. Is there a better show on TV?

On Nostalgia, or things to do in Alameda with friends you don't see often enough

My old friend, Clint Marsh, tells me that my posts tend to go on too long. So, for his sake, as he's one of maybe three people who ever read this blog, I'll keep it short.

This past Saturday was a celebration of nostalgia, both nostalgic for me on several levels and about nostalgia in odd ways. A combination of a couple of Ancient Greek words, nostalgia literally means "aching to return home," and was originally coined to describe a kind of homesickness. I can only say that these days, ye gods, I ache.

In the morning, I wandered up Park Street, which was closed off once again for the annual classic car show. I am not really a car person any more, admittedly more for political reasons than because I don't actually love awesome cars, a huge variety of which were on display on Saturday.

The above was one of my favorites, almost certainly out of nostalgia for my childhood Hot Wheels. No matter how you feel about a particular hobby that you don't engage in yourself - such as, say, one that celebrates huge, resource-hogging machines that have contributed mightily to the destruction of the environment, our sense of interconnectedness, community and place, not to mention the public health over the last century - it is wonderful to see so much geeky enthusiasm and joy on display. Besides, some of these cars are really fucking cool.

After the car show and requisite breakfast burrito from Viva Mexico,  Thomas Carlson came over. I've known him since high school, when I was dating his older sister, still a dear friend I barely ever get to see, so hanging out with Tom always has a faint corona of nostalgia, and a longing for home. We went to the Alameda Theatre to see the re-released Toy Story 1 & 2 double-feature in 3D. These movies, still among the very best Pixar has put out, have nostalgia as their subject. That got me thinking that I would like to see a database of movie subject matter - I mean, there are a lot of movies that make you feel nostalgic, TS1&2 among them, but how many are about nostalgia, for example?

The 3D aspect was fairly subtle, but enhancing, and we agreed that TS2 is still one of the all-time greatest movie sequels, one of those rarest of sequels that manage to top the original, like The Godfather, Part 2 or Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn.

We got back home and found that Clint had just arrived, in time for the evening's nostalgia to begin.

There was, of course, the usual Ottumwa gossip and chitchat, then delivery from Dragon Rouge, the great Vietnamese Bistro on Encinal between Park and Oak. Clint figured out that this Dragon Rouge was not this Dragon Rouge, then the three of us went across town to the Lucky JuJu.

It was my first time there, but I don't know what Alameda attraction can top, for good times or nostalgia with a capital P, the Pacific Pinball Museum at the Lucky JuJu arcade. Just go: Go! - and in the flash and tumult, the spinning bells and bright lights, surrender, as a boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Defending Copyright or Corporate Censorship? You say tomato...

Yesterday, as the inevitable fallout from David Letterman's who-gives-a-shit "sex scandal" began to drift down from on high like magical cable-news-ratings-booster pixie dust, this word from the New York Times, letting us know about CBS scrambling to scrub the Web of Dave's on-air mea culpa from Thursday night's show. Never mind that there are plenty of "Late Show" clips online, whether on YouTube, CBS's official TV.com or everywhere else, somehow only these specific clips are causing copyright concerns.

Does CBS have the legal authority to take down these clips? Sure, though no one could fully explain to you why they would bother - logically, that is. But this is obviously a case of a mega-corporation using copyright law (specifically the DMCA) to censor clips they don't want the public to have a chance to view, which makes it a perfect example of the deep flaws in our current system of "intellectual property."

Vegemite, Delicious Vegemite

Saw on Boing Boing today a mention of a ludicrously restrictive Terms of Use agreement over at the Kraft Corporation site for their product, Vegemite, apparently a delicious Australian spread that I have heard mixed reviews of, let's say, from people who have actually eaten it, which I have not. Evidently, you are not allowed to link to the site "in any way whatsover."

And you can check it out on their site by following this link.

The Mastick House

Passed by here on the weekly bike ride. The sign in the yard caught my attention. If you click through on the picture, you'll see a bigger size and you'll be able to read it, hopefully. As if the school board recall effort and lawsuit over the gay anti-bullying curriculum wasn't proof enough, this picture further demonstrates that there are idiots everywhere.

In case anyone is wondering, the answer to the question posed by the sign is Hawaii. The question refers to Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Sunday Morning

Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico 'Sunday Morning' from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

The Garden

Just finished watching Scott Hamilton Kennedy's superb 2008 documentary, The Garden. The film tells the story of the South Central Farm which, at 14 acres, was perhaps the largest urban farm in the United States, located in South Central Los Angeles. Farmed by 350 mostly poor, mostly Latino families, for subsistence purposes, the story of the "garden" is a riveting tale of craven politicians, spectacular self-sufficiency as a response to poverty, extraordinary courage, deep-seated racism and soul-shattering greed. It's a heartbreaking story that tell us everything we need to know about human rights in the Unites States in the early 21st century. Everyone needs to see this film.

Lego of My First Amendment Rights!

This story is a week old now, but I've been away and I had to make a comment about it, because it's just ridiculous and a perfect example of corporate censorship due to abuse of intellectual property law. Here's the rundown:

Spinal Tap has been on tour, a kind of acoustic, old-timers tour (called "Unwigged and Unplugged"), which is pretty funny in and of itself. In addition to playing Tap songs and Folksmen songs, they joke around and show videos and stuff. Here's one of the videos, which was made by a high school kid and uploaded to YouTube and which Tap loved:



They loved it so much, for obvious reasons, that they actually played it at their shows. So this was all fine and good until it came time to put out a DVD of the tour, which would have included some of the kid's Lego video. Long story short, Lego balked.

Julie Stern, a Lego spokesdrone, told the New York Times, "We love that our fans are so passionate and creative with our products. But it had some inappropriate language, and the tone wasn't appropriate for our target audience of kids 6 to 12." (Because corporations apparently have the right to dictate, under the threat of a lawsuit, how consumers use their products.) The article continues:

"Kia Kamran, an intellectual property lawyer representing Spinal Tap, said the band could have prevailed had Lego sued alleging copyright infringement, because Mr. Hickey’s video does not show the brand’s logo and is satirical. But the band did not deem the fight worth the expense, he said. 'In my heart of hearts, I do think this is fair use' of copyrighted material, Mr. Kamran said."

And, after explaining that numerous Lego parody videos exist on YouTube, some with much more "inappropriate" content and pointing out that Lego has not attempted to take them down, the article returns to the aptly named Ms. Stern:

“'YouTube is a less commercial use,' Ms. Stern said. 'But when you get into a more commercial use, that’s when we have to look into the fact that we are a trademarked brand, and we really have to control the use of our brand, and our brand values.'"

Finally, the kid (Coleman Hickey, now 16) who made the video, after acknowledging his disappointment says, "It’s not like I was going to get any money for it, but it’s too bad. Lego has the right to do that, but it’s unfortunate that they don’t have a little more of a sense of humor.”

First of all, young Coleman, Lego does NOT have the "right" to do this. It is not your fault that you think this is the case, because we have allowed corporations to control the way young people are taught about intellectual property and the propaganda that they release is almost never challenged by the news media (which are, of course, almost entirely owned by the same corporations). Lego is merely throwing its weight around because they judged, correctly, that Spinal Tap would not want to pay the gigabucks required to fight them in court - NOT because they thought they had a legitimate case. Who can blame the band? Tap is three comedians in their 60s milking their most popular act prior to retirement. Lego is a privately held Danish company worth hundreds of millions, if not several billion, dollars.

Yeah, it's unfortunate that Lego doesn't have a sense of humor; it's more unfortunate that corporations are allowed to strong-arm artists (whether they are corporate artists or not) and effectively prevent them from exercising their First Amendment right of free speech without getting smacked down. The term for this is "prior restraint."

Second, the writer of this article blithely goes along with - or even creates - the impression that Lego was somehow asserting copyright in this case, by attributing the notion that, if Tap had used the video and Lego had sued, the suit would be based on a claim of copyright, to an IP lawyer (notice, however, that he's not actually quoted saying that). But that's a highly specious assertion.

The United States Copyright Office defines copyright as "a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works." Further, copyright protects "original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed."

Note that plastic toys do not seem to be one of the protected categories. However, this is not made explicitly clear, as it would perhaps be a waste of time to attempt to list all of the specific things in the world copyright does not protect. Plus, since copyright applies to artworks like sculptures, perhaps a lawyer could make the case that Legos are sculptures and therefore subject to copyright.

It doesn't matter, though, because this dispute is not about a copy of Legos. It's about a depiction of Legos in a video and whether that video can be incorporated into another video. Legos used to be under a patent that prevented other companies from marketing similar plastic bricks, but that patent expired in 1988. Trademark law prohibits someone from calling their similar plastic brick a "Lego," but not from calling it anything else. Trademark certainly does not have anything to say about your "brand values," whatever the fuck that corporatist oxymoron is supposed to mean. Nope, all trademark means is that someone can't make the exact same thing that you do and call it the exact same thing that you call it.

Common sense - and case law, which is mostly all we have to go on in this type of case, since there is not much that is explicit about IP laws and these cases can only be decided by going to court - would seem to suggest that neither copyright, trademark or patent protections apply in this case. Maybe look at it this way: If you owned a Mustang, what's happened here is the equivalent of the Ford Motor Company telling you can't put your Mustang in a movie. If you are under the impression that this is Ford's "right," then you, too, have succumbed to the aggressive propaganda by which corporations have been siphoning up our rights as citizens when it comes to freedom of expression.

As a kid, Legos were my favorite toy, for many years. Now, they largely suck because they went from being a highly interchangeable creative building toy to being sold in super-specialized packs with much less interchangeability and much more cross-branding. That alone is a real shame; but what the company has done in this instance is simply a disgrace.

U.S. Airways: Worst Airline Ever?

So, I'm leaving today on trip for a few days. I'm flying from Oakland to Albany, New York. In order to do this, I have to fly to Phoenix, then Detroit, then Albany. It's going to take twelve hours and three flights. There was no simpler way.

Last night around 7 PM I get a robo-call from U.S. Airways letting me know that my first flight has been canceled. Instead of leaving at 9 AM, they are going to put me on a flight at 6, meaning getting up at 4 AM. The reason given for the cancellation is "routine, scheduled maintenance." So, I got up at 4 - and so did my wife and infant son, because she's driving me to the airport.

I went to the U.S. Airways website. My new 6 AM flight has been delayed. It now leaves at 8:50. I called the phone number to confirm and the reason given for the delay is that "the crew was required to complete a mandatory rest period."

I want them to maintain their planes; I want the crew to be rested. But this kind of thing is just a perverse jerking-around of a customer who is already paying too much to make a ridiculous all-day tour of the country, compounded by Orwellian lies. Insult to injury, I think that's called.

If you can avoid flying U.S. Airways, do so. But, like me, you probably can't.

Public Enemies

Yesterday, I finally saw Michael Mann's new gangster movie, Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger and Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis, the G-Man on his trail. I've been an admirer of Mann's for years, if not precisely a fan (or fanatic), and the qualities for which I've most admired him are well displayed here: restless, creative risk-taking to the limits of big-budget studio filmmaking, technological experimentation and almost casually virtuosic direction of action set pieces.

From the general audience standpoint, only the latter quality really matters. Most viewers will have no idea that they just watched a film that was not shot on film at all, but in high definition video, let alone that Mann changed frame rates a couple of times in the film to deliberately make it look like video as we're used to seeing it on TV, rather than video aping the frame rate of standard film projection (24 frames per second). This is not to say that these techniques do not affect the audience, necessarily. Most people just don't notice them and don't care about them.

In my book, this is how it should be. Technology - yes, even spectacular FX - ought not be noticed as such. An audience should be too busy engaging with the film on some human level, like emotionally or intellectually, to notice how well the technology works. For people like me, this is sometimes difficult, because we are too steeped in filmmaking itself to fail to notice the man behind the curtain, as it were. Though a small group over all, there are plenty of film fans who fall into this category. We can talk about Mann's color palette, which HD camera he used, why he shot this period film in an almost documentary style and what was behind his decision to sometimes shoot at a higher frame rate, thereby making scenes inspired by 30s newsreels appear to have been filmed by present-day cable news crews. Is this aesthetic choice a sly commentary on John Dillinger's celebrity, suggesting that things haven't changed all that much in America? Maybe, but why make such a commentary in a way guaranteed to sail over the heads of most viewers? Will they simply sense this aspect, without quite being able to put their fingers on it? (Or perhaps his critique is too commonplace, made many times before in superior films like Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands, to name two in a similar vein, as well as in many films of various quality, to have much impact.)

Whether the audience can sense the subtler changes that digital cinema can bring to the moviegoing experience is a pretty interesting question, for some, and it's questions like that that make Public Enemies an interesting film, for some. But this kind of experience is awfully cerebral, disappointingly so for a film packed with superb actors and based on such terrific characters and fascinating history. Barely anything human in the film registered with me - the only character I was really interested in was Billy Crudup's winking, bow-legged, feral J. Edgar Hoover. I applaud Mann for understanding we did not to see an elaborate backstory for Dillinger or his nemesis, for trusting his audience enough to drop us right into the action, but this does not mean every character should be a cipher. We all like Johnny Depp, but we still need a character. Christian Bale registers even less - practically anyone could have played the role to equal or greater effect. Marion Cotillard serves only a vague (and elsewhere wholly disregarded) historicity as Dillinger's girlfriend, Billie Frechette, but the affair delivers no chemistry, no romance, and only meager story- and plot-related value. Why is she even here?

Some of Mann's story choices, as friends have pointed out to me, are bold. There is no "final confrontation" scene between Depp and Bale, for example; instead, Dillinger's last words after he's gunned down are delivered to a supporting character, who tells them to Frechette in the final scene. This is one of many small ways Mann rejects conventional Hollywood storytelling - the almost complete lack of expository detail is another - and these are smart, interesting choices. I believe that this can be done, though, while still finding room for the kind of genuine, specific, shocking, documentary humanity that is required for truly engaging, full-throated storytelling.

As a postscript, I would add that it's truly weird to watch a film set in the early 1930s in which, perhaps, two cigarettes are seen. A key moment at the end of the film has Bale lighting a cigar to signal the other Feds that Dillinger has left the building - only, unless I blinked and missed it, we don't even see him light the cigar. We see the cigar, we see the matches, we see him raising a lit match out of frame, then on to something else. As an artistic choice, this smoking ban is fine, albeit weirdly and totally inaccurate, if that's really what was wanted. Except, that's not the story - this is just corporate self-censorship to spare us the shock of seeing Johnny Depp and Christian Bale smoke. The movie is already rated R. So what gives?

Polymeric Thin Films

That would be a good name for a film company, by which I mean a motion picture company. I often write about that kind of film, but the Google Advertising Bot advertised about the polymeric thin kind.

Additional thoughts

The previous post limns my disgust with Ben Stein's piss-poorly reasoned pro-Intelligent Design film, Expelled, although I didn't go into much detail on what I felt was so weak about his argument. Today, I've read an interesting piece by The Ethicist, in his weekly "Moral of the Story" column. On the subject of the current war over health care in the Congress, Cohen asks, "Is some debate so suspect as to be unethical?"

That's an interesting question - what he means is, when you're a politician or political operative making public statements and arguments on a contentious topic, such as whether there ought to be a "public option," do you have any kind of ethical responsibility to argue from logic employing truthful information or is it permissible to just lie your ovoid, turd-blossomy head off?

What do you think The Ethicist has to say about that?

As it relates to the Stein film, if you watch it you'll notice that the smug, arrogant, condescending Stein is about as lazy and partisan in his approach to his issue as many Republicans have been in considering the health care issue. It's as easy, and as devoid of any actual meaning, to simply say that Obama's a "socialist" as it is for Stein to hint that those who agree that evolution is science fact are Nazis. Or tantamount to Nazis. Or whatever he was saying.

Baby with the bathwater

Recently, I have seen two very different documentaries on two very controversial topics.

Tony Kaye's 2006 Lake of Fire is a harrowing, 2 1/2 hour black and white take on abortion, a great piece of work. It manages to be convincingly balanced, giving time to many different voices, from crazies advocating the murder of abortion providers to Jane Roe herself to Pat Buchanan, Dershowitz and old man Chomsky, as well as to a number of mere mortals, and lesser creatures, such as Randall Terry. It's tough going, with graphic images of abortions and relentless craziness, no matter what your personal beliefs. Dershowitz and loony Chomsky are very amusing, at points, and right on target, of course. The film is worth seeing for its clarity and compassion for all its subjects - it will make you stop and consider your own attitudes more closely. I am curious to know more about how the final scenes were constructed - whether some events were restaged or if multiple cameras were used - but either way, a serious, thought-provoking documentary.

Also provocative, though I know not what of, is Nathan Frankowski's Ben Stein starrer Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a well-shot but smug and disappointingly boneheaded film about academic freedom vis-a-vis Intelligent Design. Sadly, for him, Stein is also credited as a writer. The film makes an important point about the dangers of squelching academic freedom - in this case, in the way that (according to the film) many scientists have been ostracized, even to the point of ending careers, for the sin of expressing an open mind toward Intelligent Design - which is that science must always be willing to question its own assumptions, no matter how entrenched. Scientists must be willing - and have the freedom - to be wrong, in the name of seeking truth.

Scientists seek what we might call natural truth. Evolution by means of natural selection is such a natural truth; an accepted law of biology. Biologists who do not accept this are heretical, and few, but this is not necessarily a reason to fire them. However, religious faith is not in conflict with biology. There are plenty of religious Darwinists (the film's perjorative term for anyone who believes in evolution) who have no trouble whatsoever balancing these two worldviews. Indeed, I think most people are capable of holding multiple views on a single topic without feeling that they have to choose only one. This is what makes the extreme views on the topic of origins so perplexing - atheists who categorically insist on the non-existence of God and fundamentalists who insist that, I don't know, the earth is actually a six thousand year old walnut.

What Stein and Company do here is skate over the surface of an issue that could really use a compassionate, clear-eyed exploration, as in Lake of Fire. Instead, Expelled is hideous propaganda in sheep's clothing; I mean, for the love of Jesus H. Christ, by the end Stein is literally comparing proponents of evolution to Nazis. You see, the Nazis used eugenics theories based on Darwinism to justify the murder of the Jews. So that's where Darwin's theories lead. In other words, if some crazy-evil bastards twist science-based ideas beyond recognition to further their crazy evil, we should question the validity of the science? That's as stupid as the argument that says we should be atheists because bad things have been done in the name of religion. That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And, disturbingly, Stein goes to Dachau to make this argument. Look what evolution did! It killed 6 million Jews. Watch out, lest evolution do it again! Stein is Jewish, but he has no trouble trading on this unspeakable horror perpetrated against his own people to argue a totally unrelated and truly fatuous point.

There was a time when I respected Ben Stein. I thought he was a smart guy, even if I didn't always agree with him. But this film shows that he's just one more shallow, opportunistic conservative media whore. Now he's doing commercials for Comcast. Can he sink any lower?

Okay, I'll talk about copyright for a second

I have so far largely avoided talking about one of my pet issues on this blog, namely the tangle of thorns known as the current take on copyright law in the U.S. I've avoided it mostly so I wouldn't end up writing only about this topic, though I have mentioned it on occasion, because in my experience people hate this issue and find it incredibly boring. I'd like to tackle it at some point, though, and try to make it interesting to people, and try to make it matter to them. I think fixing our broken copyright system matters a great deal and gets to the very heart of our democracy, our First Amendment right to free speech.

Today, though, I just wanted to mention a very specific case. Back in February, I wrote about the Oscars which had just been handed out. At the time, I embedded a YouTube clip from the broadcast of a skit performed by Seth Rogen and James Franco as their Pineapple Express characters. It was a hilarious skit, one of the (few) highlights of the telecast and, after watching PE again the other night, I wanted to watch the skit again.

Alas, when I went to my post to watch the embedded clip, I clicked on it and got this message instead: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by AMPAS Oscars." In other words, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out the Oscars and produces the awards show, did not authorize that clip to be shown on YouTube. I'd like to point out a few things about this:

First, if you followed the above link back to that post, you'll notice I have reembedded the clip from a different website. AMPAS's takedown request was completely useless, even though it seems to have been effective with regard to YouTube, because there are hundreds of other video sharing sites on the Web and once a popular clip has been passed around it's as near to impossible as makes no difference to take it down. The fast Google search I performed to find the clip somewhere other than YouTube yielded dozens of sites on the first results page. Bottom line: this brand of corporate censorship - oh, what? you think that's not the right word? you want me to grab a dictionary? - literally does not work.

Second, I'd like to know by what reasonable calculation the Academy loses one stinking dime by allowing fans to share a clip like this. I don't see it on their website. I don't see it exclusively licensed to another site, like Funny or Die. Is AMPAS going to release the clip in some other form, for instance, an Oscar highlights DVD? Maybe they will - and if that's the plan, would someone walk me through how leaving the clip up on YouTube fucks up that plan? Maybe you think that the argument is that no one would buy the DVD, or download, or whatever, if the clip was available for free. Really? How do you know that? How do you know that the kind of person who would actually buy such a DVD even knows that YouTube exists? How do you know that, even if they know the clip is on YouTube, that they wouldn't buy the DVD for the far superior quality and for all the other clips that such a DVD would theoretically contain? The truth is, no one has any idea but I would suggest that the tiny little market for such a DVD would not be hurt - in fact, with the right kind of promotion, it could be helped - by allowing that clip to be seen online.

Third, fuck AMPAS and its cadre of overpaid lawyers, billing hours just to justify their retainers. This is the kind of reflexive, thoughtless, overzealous, anti-consumer, anti-fan copyright protectionism that we, the people, need to crush like a mob hit in a trash compactor. This is the toughest aspect of the problem, though - getting "the people" to care about any of this. Much in the same way that some people are not in favor of taxing the wealthiest Americans a bit more to provide important services for poorer people because they think they themselves are going to be rich someday, even though there is almost no chance of that (amidst many other, much better arguments for the stupidity of their position), other folks think that the draconian copyright protections lobbied for and won by the media corporations might help them out when they create valuable content one day. Which they almost certainly will not. The "common sense" argument, that, well, of course AMPAS should take down the content, because it's their property, deserves a longer dissection than I feel like doing right now, but I will come back to it.

Fourth, and finally, at some point a different kind of common sense will have to prevail, by which media corporations will realize that they aren't getting anywhere with this type of behavior. Like the political argument that says the war on terror has ended up creating more terrorists, the war on "piracy" will only create more pirates. That is, when I hear that some mom in the Midwest - whatever her true motives - did some minor music sharing and so now has to fork over a million bucks to the recording industry, it makes me want to steal music and give it away to everyone I know. Ah, but will I actually do so? So, my hating the industry for being total dicks, so long as I don't steal anything, is of no concern?

The James Mangold Episode

When I was in film school, we would frequently have guest artist seminars, which I believe were "mandatory." There were a number of memorable guests - Martin Landau was the best, but we also saw Melvin van Peebles, Sally Menke and this awesome dolly grip. Another time, James Mangold brought his Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line. The school is the California Institute of the Arts, in Valencia, CA - Mangold is an alumnus, which I assume by some largess is how we got such a screening. CalArts almost never previewed current Hollywood films for their students - not artsy enough! Around the same time, some marketeers wanted to preview Hard Candy, an "edgy," but mediocre indie thriller starring Ellen Page, but the faculty canceled the screening on the basis of its not being good enough a film, I presume.

Typically, a guest artist for the film directing program would show a film or films and then have a Q&A.

I often find myself thinking about the Mangold screening. Prior to attending grad school, I had seen two James Mangold films, Heavy and Cop Land. I had a good opinion of him; I hadn't known about his CalArts connection before I went there. I can still recall his first film, Heavy, with its sensitive portrayal of a shy outcast, beautifully played by Pruitt Taylor Vince. Cop Land was fine and basically I thought he was a filmmaker who was slowly "going Hollywood" but had managed to hang on to a point of view and a level of quality that I respected, if not revered.

And actually, now that I think about it, it was one of our faculty, Gill Dennis, the film's writer, who hooked up the screening. I remember we filed into our cinema, the Bijou, built at the center of the art school's high modern superstructure, deep beneath the crust of the earth. Well, maybe not that deep. At the door, we had to surrender any digital acquisition devices - cameras, cell phones, bionics - that might compromise the studio's copyrights; I had none such.

I liked Walk the Line. I went in expecting just a bit less than what I got, which is always good. After all, it was a Hollywood movie, with stars - a studio-made pre-packaged hit. As such, for whatever year that was, it was a good movie. Quality product. Hollywood is what it is; if you're going to bitch and moan about everything studio - well, what's the fun in that? Studios have made great films and they still do - though WTL is not quite one of them, it's a well-made, entertaining film with bedazzling star performances and plaudits well-deserved. Me, I just feel like I'd rather see Johnny Cash in Space, in which the reincarnated Man in Black cleans up a one-speeder Martian frontier town, than a straightforward biopic, but I guess we need at least one of those, too.

At that time, as always, I was trying to do a lot of writing and struggling with it as usual. Gill Dennis was up on stage with Mangold, who was fielding a few questions after the screening. Per later analysis, our general impression of James Mangold, meaning amongst myself and my friends, was "D-Bag." Just, Hollywood douchery. But that's to be expected. Think about it - if you have success in Hollywood, it changes you. You don't necessarily realize how you come across to the Normals. You're not trying to be a D-Bag.

But, anyway, I asked him a question. The question was actually to elicit an answer from Gill, as well as Mangold. I wanted to know about the process of telling a well-known true story in terms of writing a screenplay - how do you know what to leave in, or out, or change factually to serve a dramatic necessity? My mistake was in the way I asked the question - I asked, What compromises did you have to make between the facts of Johnny Cash's real life and the dramatization of that life? I gave the question more context than that (explaining my interest in the writing process), but the key word here is compromises.

Mangold rejected that word. "We didn't make any compromises, really." He went on to talk about his and Gill's access to the Cashes, or something. The point is, he misunderstood my question in a way that really underscored the whole douchey thing, although it was my mistake - compromise was a bad choice of words. This guy was from Hollywood; they don't "compromise" there. They win. This was a shame from my perspective because I really did want to know about the practical and philosophical issues raised by writing history, biography in particular. But this guy was only interested in talking about his cock.

Just kidding, Mangold! It's cool - and the truth is, at the time, I just thought it was a funny little exchange, was bummed that I didn't get my question answered properly but accepted it. Afterward, however, a number of friends and associates came up to me and let me know how they felt about the way Mangold had failed to answer my question. In fact, all that stuff about douche bags probably came from them. What your friends say influences you. I didn't really know how to feel about the brush-off. I had very conscientiously tried to phrase my question in a neutral way. The last thing I wanted was to be seen as that asshole art school student who's trying to fuck with the Hollywood guy, which I really was not. But that's what happened.

His answer was just silly on its face - you "didn't compromise," c'mon, bullshit, life is compromise. Of course there's compromise in art sometimes, especially where commerce intersects. And in terms of my question, supposing he understood it, it's a bullshit answer, too. It's not possible to tell the entire story of a man's life. You begin editing as soon as you open your mouth. Otherwise you'd be there forever.

As an example, I have just described an episode from my own life, the one in which I briefly intersected with James Mangold, Film Director. I have forgotten many details, including the exact wording of my question, his exact response, at what point I first thought he was a douchebag, whether I thought that going in, when all of this occurred, who I was with and why, and almost everything else. Yet I keep remembering the episode. If Mangold's next announced film, "Untitled James Mangold Project," is, like it sounds, the life story of one James Mangold, will this episode be included?

One Wise Latina

Listening to some of the hearings on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, one marvels at a couple of things. First of all, this is a great country, with an extraordinary legal and political system. Secondly, this is a very strange, absurd and even ridiculous kind of theater. The purpose of these hearings is not clear to me.

It is well known that no nominee is going to say what she actually thinks about any issue that might come before the court, which is pretty much anything. Any time any such question is asked by the bloviators of the Judiciary Committee, who will do so at great length and with either trembling respect or barely concealed contempt, depending on their party affiliation, the nominee will parry by running through a list of important decisions by name while throwing in Latin terminology whenever possible, such as stare decisis and ex post facto, but without stating an opinion of any kind.

Nevertheless, the Senators keep on coming, trying to trip her up by getting her to admit that she has her own opinions and, in the meantime, testing her ability to recall specifics of potentially any high court case from our history. As theater it's unsatisfying because of its format: long-winded, self-serving, name-dropping questions followed by expert, extremely lawyerly equivocation, at once erudite, cautious and painfully dull. We can always hope for a Long Dong Silver surprise, but that's pretty unlikely.

As for Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment, apart from the fact that it's just weird that our public figures are expected not to have any interesting thoughts or make any personal comments, ever, looking back over their entire lives, it just seems a particularly tiny straw to grab. If Clarence Thomas can sexually harass Anita Hill, pubic hairs and all, and get voted onto the Court, certainly Sonia Sotomayor can show some pride in her heritage and make a statement that pretty much anyone with the slightest poetic imagination would agree with, or at least understand in its context.

Madoff sentenced to hell

Or maybe not quite hell - Bernie Madoff got 150 years today - but if hell had been an option, I'm sure that most people would have cheered such a sentence. Or, perhaps, like Prometheus, he could have been chained to a rock at the end of the world for a few thousand years with his guts eaten out of him every day by vultures, only to be replaced overnight so the punishment could begin anew each day. Would that have brought the money back?

Madoff is clearly a world-class asshole. I have a hard time understanding how he could have even perpetrated such a collosal swindle without being some kind of psychopath, in a certified, DSM-IV kind of way. What he did was despicable and disgusting, an infliction of suffering if not, as Judge Chin would have it, "extraordinarily evil," than at least ordinarily evil.

But I wonder, what is the price of freedom? I mean freedom in the sense of not being in prison. Can we put a price tag on the workaday freedom that we all take for granted? Being able to go outside, walk to the store, see a movie, make love to our wife, go to the library, call friends on the phone, have a beer, work? What is that worth?

Well, if Bernie's scam was worth $65 billion, and he got 150 years, the cost of freedom in the United States in 2009 is $1,187,214.61 per day.

Maybe that kind of reckoning doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it makes about as much sense, to me, as someone getting 150 years in prison - for any crime. That's supposed to make us feel better? That he won't even be up for parole until he's been dead for a hundred years?

We're told that this sentence, which was the harshest possible under the law, will deter other fraudsters. What a load of horseshit. Like I said, Madoff is probably a psychopath. What deters such a person from anything? This sentence is ridiculous mob-justice, period. What happened to life in prison, which is what this sentence is, of course?

Or what happened to letting the punishment fit the crime? Why not send Bernie to jail for a while, take every last penny from him (mostly already done, or underway) and everyone who benefited from his fraud and pay back as much of the money as possible. Then, let him out of prison and give him an electronic bracelet, a shitty apartment and a shittier job, perhaps something that involves actually working with, and having to touch, shit. When did the answer to every conceivable crime in this country become lock them up for ever!

The United States has the highest documented prison population in the world. Not per capita; the highest in raw numbers! China ranks second - and they have a population of 1.3 billion people. We need prison reform in our country, desperately; our habit of locking people up is a sad legacy, especially given our stated values as a nation and as a people.

It does not need to be this way in order to teach people like Bernie Madoff a lesson. Let's use some common sense. And while we're on the subject - I said what he did was terrible, even evil - but people might also want to consider that something that looks too good to be true, like double digit returns on investment for years at a time, probably is! I am not blaming the victims for Madoff's scam, but his fraud certainly does not seem to have been particularly sophisticated. It was garden variety bullshit and people just spread it around and spread it around for twenty years.

Insanely greedy bastards who rob people need to be punished. Doing so is also a fine opportunity to consider the ways in which greed blinds us all.

Whatever Works

According to the IMDb, Whatever Works is Woody Allen's 44th film as a director, if we include a couple of TV movies and segments from TV specials. His first such credit was What's Up, Tiger Lily? in 1966. By any reckoning this is a stunning achievement, and Allen as compulsively prolific an American filmmaker as any who has ever lived, save only the earliest Hollywood filmmakers, who churned out dozens of films a year in the silent era (though these were shorts) and managed multiple features each year under the studio system. These days, the most respected filmmakers in the world are lucky to put out a film ever three years or so - and if they manage that, they will probably spend the next couple years resting.

This is strikingly true of the younger generation of established American independents, like Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson and their ilk, who have taken years and years between films. A newer crop of filmmakers has come along in the meantime, among them Kelly Reichardt and Ramin Bahrani, who seem to need less time, thankfully. Still no one (in America) approaches Woody Allen in terms of speed and efficiency of production, not even Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg who have both, on occasion, managed to release two films in one year (last year saw Eastwood's Changeling and Gran Torino) but have not kept up the one-movie-per-year pace for over 40 years like Allen.

I have seen every one of Woody Allen's theatrical films, most of them more than once, some of them many, many times. I have read mulitple books about Allen and by Allen. I am a fan, in the true sense of the word: I am fanatic about this filmmaker. He is one my idols, and I know more about him than any other artist. I see his films in the theater, each year, on the first day of their release.

I am not an apologist for Woody Allen. I have a particular view of him and his work - I tend to think that he peaked, not in his conventional-wisdom 1970s heyday, nor in the midst of his extraordinary artistic exploration and expansion in the 1980s (1985's The Purple Rose of Cairo is his oft-stated personal favorite and it's easy to see why), but at the end of that period with 1992's acid and hilarious Husbands and Wives. I am, on the contrary, a tough critic of his work and certainly will not deny that late period Woody, for the most part, stinks.

Of course, lately, hopeful critics and fans have talked about a renaissance for the Woodman, beginning with 2005's London-lensed Match Point, a sexy thriller in a Claude Chabrol mode, of all things. Certainly, MP was an entertaining film but, for long time fans, it was also an obvious Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) remix, transplanted to London, with hot young stars, a bit of tennis and much less moral seriousness. That MP came after a decade of dispiriting decline, which included several contenders for Worst Woody Allen Film (Anything Else, anyone?), certainly helped its reception and it does seem to be an instance of Woody Allen, suddenly, caring about filmmaking again.

Last year, he released Vicky Cristina Barcelona, for my money his funniest and most charming film in at least a decade or more. It demonstrated that he can still be fresh and vibrant, if wholly unaware of what decade it is. Now we get Whatever Works, as stale, unfunny and sloppy a film as he has made.

Originally written for Zero Mostel, then moth-balled when Mostel died in September, 1977, Woody recently told Terry Gross on Fresh Air that he dusted off the script in a big hurry when he thought SAG might strike last year. (By the way, it was a fascinating interview, catnip for any critical fan, especially in how skillfully and disingenuously he dodged most of the more interesting questions about his art imitating his life.) The film feels exactly like this, as if he literally pulled the script out of an old filing cabinet and sent it with his assistant to Kinkos while he was driven to the set to begin shooting. Apart from one or two nods to 2009 (a Taliban reference here, an Obama reference there), the film feels decades out of touch.

Watching Larry David helplessly mugging, grinning and flailing in the Woody Allen role as one of the crankiest assholes ever to appear in a Woody Allen film, I kept imagining Zero Mostel in the part. Whatever Works might have worked in the 70s, with tighter, more imaginative direction, Mostel's sublime misanthropy, a half dozen rewrites, a daffy Diane Keaton in the role of the country bumpkin come to the big city, snappy editing, and somewhere to go storywise. In the version we have, Evan Rachel Wood is leggy, adorable and drowning, hopelessly undirected, as an insultingly stereotypical, but unbelievably, "stupid" southern girl. David, a comic whose one note rings perfectly on Curb Your Enthusiasm is an unlikable, unlikely "genius" whose broken-record hatred for humanity and existential gloom become instantly tiresome.

Naturally, these two, separated in age by forty years, get married after David rescues Wood from being the hottest homeless girl in New York, takes her in and half-heartedly does a Pygmalion on her (a perennial theme in Woody-world, done much better in Mighty Aphrodite). Wood can be a good actress, but I suspect she needs the firm hand of an involved director, not Woody's famously hands-off approach with actors. For seasoned actors, however, that approach almost always yields strong performances, and Patrica Clarkson makes the absolute most out of her ridiculously stereotypical Southern Baptist Blanche DuBois character, Wood's mother, who comes to New York to find her runaway daughter, only to be seduced by the city's art scene when her family album is mistaken for outsider art.

Other actors, like the normally wonderful Michael McKean are wasted in empty supporting roles and some, like Ed Begley, Jr., just seem miscast. Harris Savides, one of my favorite cinematographers, manages to bring some panache and some nice movement to Allen's otherwise lazy, distracted mise-en-scene - which feature of his films used to be among the more interesting in contemporary cinema. All in all, a disappointment, and a bigger one than usual. Let's hope his next film - another London-set number - swings him back the other way.

Michael Jackson is Dead at 50

When I was a dorky kid in the 80's, I didn't really listen to a lot of popular music. There are many reasons for this, foremost among them that there was no one at home who had any interest in such things. Still, there were of course plenty of songs and artists who were inescapable in the culture. Only a handful of these were truly worth listening to, and almost none of them could claim the mantle of genius.

But Michael Jackson was different. He was a genius, a true king of pop, if not the only king. He didn't do it alone - we wouldn't have the brilliance of Off the Wall and the perfection of Thriller without Quincy Jones, for example - but it was his music, his words, his sound, his moves, his glove.

In spite of everything that happened since - as MJ got crazier and crazier and creepier and creepier, though I still don't believe he actually touched those kids - we have Thriller, the ultimate, get-off-your-hipster-ass dance album, a desert island disc for all time, and so much more. He gave us the greatest gift of all, an eternity of booty-shaking, pure pop joy. I dare you, put on Thriller and try not to move.

I, for one, am damn sorry you're gone, Mike. For all your insanity, the planet is poorer tonight. Thanks for the jams, baby!

SCOTUS rules 13 year old girl should not have been strip searched

Yeah, so this school in Arizona thought it had the right to strip search a 13 year old girl, including searching her underwear, to look for...ibuprofen. Turns out, heh, that violated her Fourth Amendment rights. Says the NYT:

"Thursday’s ruling sends the case back to the lower courts to assess what damages, if any, should be paid by the school district. But, by a vote of 7 to 2, the Supreme Court held that the individual officials in the case should not be held liable, because 'clearly established law' at the time of the search did not show that it violated the Fourth Amendment."

Jesus, fine. Because adults definitely ought to rely on "clearly established law" rather than common sense when it comes to questions of "should we make this child take off her clothes while we look for Advil." On the main issue, the court ruled 8-1. Now who do you think was the dissenter?

Let's see...underage girl, strip search, underwear, stubbornly opposed to the "basic reasonableness" interpretation...ah! Thomas, of course. What is with that guy?

Wunderkammer

This film is by a CalArts classmate, Andrea Pallaoro. Nice work, Andrea! It is, I'd have to say, highly in character.

Vacation movies

While we were on vacation in Texas, Kim and I took advantage of the grandparents by slipping out a couple of times to go to the movies.

First, we saw Pixar's Up, in 3D, in San Antonio. I thought it was a lovely film, certainly worthy of the Pixar name, and a charming, unusual, original story until the final act. The first ten minutes of Up is probably the best storytelling we'll get at the movies this year, compact, funny and heartbreaking. Flawless, really. What comes after is truly entertaining and only at the end does the film become louder and rougher and a bit less imaginative, and more like all non-Pixar American animation.

Plus, they had these funky 3D glasses that you could keep if you like to collect junk. Which I do. Backing up a step, in case anyone is curious about why Pixar just keeps making one good movie after another (with the arguable exception of Cars), I revealed the key a moment ago. They tell original stories. Look around at the studio animation scene: is anyone else doing that? Their films also somehow manage to feel auteur-driven, in spite of the thousands that work on them, rather than made by committee. It's hard to understand how they have such balls, but god bless 'em!

Up is currently on track to be the biggest grossing film of the year, after Wall Street analysts initally thought it might do poorly because the story and characters are a little unusual (the star is a grumpy old man) and there isn't the merchandizing potential of, say, Cars or Toy Story. As Bill the Cat would say, THPTH!

Secondly, we saw Sam Raimi's deliriously entertaining horror film, Drag Me to Hell. I suppose I should say, deliriously entertaining for a horror film. Occasionally I have participated in marketing surveys that ask which types of movies I like best, with the option to select from a big list of genres. This always baffles me, because I like any film as long as it's good. (In an earlier post, I describe what I mean by "good.") I see very few horror films because my perception is that almost every single one is a piece of shit. I need to be told to see one, like when my friends recommended the movie, The Descent, a solid example of the form on its better end.

Raimi, of course, has already made a couple of deliriously entertaining horror films and, no, DMTH is no Evil Dead. But it couldn't have been because he had way more money this time and Raimi's humor and perfect timing are intact from those days of yore, so it was great fun to see him cut loose. He's also just a terrific B-movie filmmaker, no matter the budget - I mean, if the Spiderman films are not B-movies, what is these days? The theater where we saw the movie, unfortunately, had the volume up to 11 which is hurting my ears even now, so that was a shame. But the movie was propulsive, disgusting, hilarious, timely, creaky and scary in all the right places, and it ended with a bang.

I admit to some mild disappointment, along with my wife, who pointed out that the heroine of the film, played by the hot but somewhat uninteresting Alison Lohman (whose blandness, nevertheless, works really well here), has very little agency throughout the film. She never actually does anything, until the very end, which one could not say about, say, Ash. She merely reacts to events and allows herself to be pushed and pulled around by every man she knows. A pretty, passive heroine, which, for me is a mixed bag. One does not much like her character or care very much about what happens to her, a bold and interesting choice. In other words, you almost root for the evil gypsy spirit to win which, I think, is really how these films ought to work.

In looking up a couple of things on IMDb for this post, I noticed that one of Raimi's next films is The Evil Dead! Apparently, Ghost House Pictures is trying to remake the original film for some reason. Raimi seems to be into it, for some reason. There's going to be a new director. It's not going to be Evil Dead 4. Whatever. Raimi already remade Evil Dead, calling it Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn. The whole ED saga is already completely self-referential and meta. So this remake idea is pretty darn stupid. Oh, well.

Shells

We spent a couple of weeks in Texas recently, in San Antonio and on the gulf coast near Corpus Christi. If you're ever in that area, I recommend Shells, a restaurant in Port Aransas, a small beach town. It's a small place, probably with a bit of a wait on weekends and holidays, and might be tough for a larger group at any time, but if you're a couple escaping together for dinner while grandma watches your infant, say, it's pretty ideal.

I had a smoked rack of pork that was, no joke, one of the finest pieces of meat I have ever had in my life. As soon as I began to eat it, I was sad that soon I would be finished eating it. I probably slightly disturbed our waitress by informing her that it was so good, I wished I had a time machine so I could go back in time and have her bring it to me again. Later I realized that what I really wanted was to become unstuck in time, like Billy Pilgrim, and loop for a while during the meal, so I could just eat it again and again and again.

North Village

Here, the Alameda Bike Posse encounters North Village, an abandoned Coast Guard housing complex. Surely, it is the future site of the zombie apocalypse.

Loyal readers will remember the site from an earlier post...

Finally, an end to music piracy!

Now that the latest trial of international digital music thief, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, has ended with a fine of $1.92 million levied against the Brainerd, Minnesota, mother of four, for having offered 24 songs for free download on the Kazaa file-sharing service, I must express some relief that digital "piracy" has finally been stopped once and for all! I have lost so much sleep over the last decade on behalf of the noble corporations that produce our music and other popular entertainment, just thinking about the sadness and sense of helplessness they must have felt as they've watched themselves get robbed again and again by their own "fans."

Real fans--for these despicable scofflaws do not deserve that name--know that the only morally correct way to consume media is to do so in exactly the way the giant media corporations tell us to. So if we have to pay $18 for a new CD of mostly filler from a mediocre band that cost perhaps $6 to actually make, so be it. Or if we have to keep buying the movies, music and television shows that we have already bought each time a new format is introduced, well, of course we'll do it. It's only fair.

We are here--the fans, the real fans--to prop up the old business models for as long as necessary--maybe forever! Consumers, after all, are not the leaders in the marketplace. Just because we have the capability and the technology to consume media the way we want to when we want to, there's no way we should do so until the corporations have given us permission. It's so cool of them that they are slowly beginning to do so, too! Now a lot of music can be bought on the iTunes store--movies, too! Of course, these files can't be given away, swapped, shared or remixed in the same way that, say, a CD could have been, but that's probably for the best--I mean, I'm sure that the corporations have the best interests of their fans at heart. If they think I don't really need to be able to copy and remix a digital movie--or that I should pay more for that ability--well, surely, they know best, right?

I do, I do trust them--the media corporations and their consortiums, like the RIAA--and I just know that they all do business fairly, with integrity, and without a whiff of greed. I mean, if they didn't--perish the thought--the people just wouldn't stand for it, would they?

Twenty Years Ago in China

"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." Thomas Jefferson

China can shut off the Internet, crowd the square with P.L.A. thugs, jail dissidents and oppress and murder its own people, but the courage of the man in the picture above is eternal. His act of quiet resistance will last forever and, one day, he will be a hero to all the people of China, who will know his name and his story, as he is to all the rest of the world.

The School Board Meeting

Last night, the board of the Alameda Unified School District finally voted on whether to adopt a controversial addition to its anti-bullying curriculum. "Lesson 9" adds some vocabulary, reading material and teaching guidelines for explaining to K-5 students that LGBT families are families, too, and that kids should not be teased because they have two mommies or two daddies. One might ask why an anti-bullying curriculum exists in the first place and whether it has replaced, say, spelling, but that ship sailed a long, long time ago.

The superintendent recommended that the board adopt the new lesson as part of the curriculum at the request of teachers who wanted some guidance and common ground in nixing playground bullying in which children call others "gay" or "fag." Teachers already felt comfortable addressing bullying on the basis of other protected class status, such as race or religion, but needed some backup in talking about sexual orientation issues. To me, this makes perfect sense. A generation from now, our culture will be able to honestly address prejudice based on sexual orientation but, as the community reaction has made clear, these days homosexuality is still tough to talk about for some reason.

That community reaction has been splashed across the pages of the local newspapers and barely contained in several hearings leading up to last night's vote. Although I did not attend those sessions, I decided to go to the board meeting last night to see what would happen. It was painfully boring, but still somehow an interesting process to have seen for myself.

Naturally, before any discussion of the issue that had packed the board chamber at City Hall to overflowing, there was an hour's worth of tedious agenda items to get through. Middle schoolers presented slide shows, student board members were recognized, reports were given, all while the polite attendees waited for the promised vote. Each side was to have 15 minutes to sum up its arguments; just as this process was to begin, the cops kicked out a random group of attendees into the overflow room, including yours truly, due to the concerns of the fire marshall, that iconic civic spoilsport.

We went quietly and remained quieter yet as we strained to hear the speakers' messages, garbled over CCTV. The overflow room seemed about 1/3 pro-curriculum and 2/3 Muslim, which for some reason meant monolithically anti-curriculum. A couple of the men carried signs that said "Alameda Muslims against LGBT," about which I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and interpret to mean "against the LGBT curriculum," which they've simply made slightly pithier by omission. That's what that means, right?

The opposition spoke first. A Muslim woman spoke about the bullying and teasing endured by Muslim girls in the public schools of Alameda when they wear the hijab. She told of one little girl who was particularly tormented by a classmate, who kept pulling her headscarf, and about how some of the parents in the local Muslim community don't feel comfortable enough with English to know what to do about this treatment. And therefore, she concluded, the board should vote down the curriculum.

Just to sum up that brilliant argument, because Muslim students in Alameda schools are sometimes unfortunately bullied because of their observation of their religious beliefs, gay students or students from gay-parent families should not have a curriculum that addresses anti-gay bullying problems. Huh? Wait, maybe I can translate this one: because your lifestyle is an abomination according to my religious beliefs, and your proposed curriculum does not specifically address my children, or respect my desire to teach my children religious intolerance and bigotry, fuck you.

This was more or less the message of a black pastor who spoke for the opposition, too. The other speaker was a lawyer who essentially said that if the school board passed this curriculum, a bunch of angry parents were going to sue the bejesus out of the already cash-strapped district for not providing an opt-out provision, allowing parents to protect their children from having to have this horrible lesson of peace and tolerance. Another wonderfully American way of saying Fuck You.

So, I'm not against the fuck you, if people would just sack up and say what they mean. How refreshing would it be for someone to say, "Yes, I am a bigot, that is my right, and it is my right to teach bigotry to my children, because that's the way Jesus or Mohammed or who-fucking-ever would have wanted it, so suck on that!" The Muslim woman claimed that the kids in her religious community would be forced to admit their prejudices during the lessons about how it's OK for Billy to have two mommies, which would subject them to even more bullying.

This is an interesting point and I won't dismiss it out of hand. Naturally, it is a legitimate concern for members of conservative religious communities that their children be treated fairly and with sensitivity in the public schools. No one who is not an asshole would dispute this. I am kind of an asshole, and I do not dispute it. In fact, I believe this kind of pluralistic fair treatment to be the very cornerstone of American democracy.

Which is why the woman's point of view and, apparently, that of many other members of her community, not to mention many others in the larger Alameda community, is so abhorrent to me: it violates that basic tenet of our democracy. How dare you make a point of demanding fair treatment for your own children while turning around and denying equal treatment to someone else's child?

One might reasonably argue that, by not including other protected classes in the curriculum, the board itself is guilty of this behavior. Reasonably, that is, until you actually look into why Lesson 9 came about in the first place, think about it for a hot second, and stop being a fucking idiot. Teachers felt that they had the tools and vocabulary necessary to make religious and racial tolerance a key aspect of the anti-bullying curriculum already, because those kinds of prejudice are so well known, understood and relatively easy to counter and teach about. What they lacked was a common sense, age-appropriate way to extend the discussion to cover a type of bullying that, by their own report, is becoming more and more common: anti-gay bullying.

Next, the pro-curriculum crowd spoke. Some of their speeches were good, some were classic East Bay hippie-dippy BS. The best was when this dorky 16-year-old hesher kid got up to talk about how he had been bullied for being gay, and how he liked fantasy and heavy metal. He was my hero of the night.

Before voting, the school board members grilled the teachers who had developed the curriculum, or who had been chosen to rep the curriculum, anyway, for what seemed like an eternity of bloviating self-love. Some people started to leave, so I was able to get back into the main chamber for the remainder of the evening. It was here that I had my one personal conflict of the night.

One of the board members, attempting to clarify something, or perhaps just being an ass, asked whether the curriculum would send the message to conservative religious kids that their parents' beliefs about homosexuality were wrong. The pro-curriculum part of the room reacted with a collective No! and I said, sotto voce, "Even though they are." This snide comment, heard by almost no one, caused a laugh-snort from the woman directly in front me and the head of the man sitting next to me to whiplash in my direction. He said, "No more than you," in a mildly shocked and offended voice, and that was it.

This was the most interesting moment of the evening for me because it led me to think about my own intolerance. After all, if I interpret him correctly, he makes an interesting philosophical point. If I would dispute religions claims as false I can, in the end, have no more proof for my point of view than the religious person, therefore I cannot be any more assured of the correctness of my view than I can of the incorrectness of that person's view.

Fair enough, philosophically and logically sound (I am not like the modern atheist whose insistence that logic demands his faithlessness is, in the end, an act of faith) -- but totally irrelevent! You are free to believe whatever you will and to raise your children in your system of belief, to teach them that homosexuality is a sin or that jews are evil or black people shifty. Your freedom to do so is another foundational American right, that I will always defend.

But our public institutions must be agnostic, BY LAW. They must, BY LAW, be equally accesible. They cannot teach one religion or even two or three or four religions as "correct." Sometimes these institutions will come into conflict with people's beliefs. That is the price we pay for living in the United States of America, that we must live with other people whose views differ and be tolerant of their right to profess those beliefs.

I am a tolerant person in that direction: you have the right to believe whatever you want, no matter how foolish or even idiotic I may find your belief system to be. Even if it's wrong! But you will not, cannot, force other people to abide by your belief system in the public sphere. This is the direction in which I am intolerant. I do not tolerate bigotry, demogoguery, lies. I do not tolerate stupidity and prejudice. If that's your religion, keep it in your home, your house of worship and share the public space. But if you want to force your beliefs on me at the expense of justice and equality for all, fuck you.

The curriculum passed, on a vote of 3-2.

A Month of Oscar

And no blogging. I will get back to it, back to life, back to whatever is normal for me now. The new normal. Normal wasn't normal for me before he was born - I'm actually used to having a job or at least an occupation - so who knows what normal will be now. What I know is that this economy sucks, that rich, greedy assholes fucked it up for everyone, that George Bush is especially to blame, that most politicians aren't much better. What I know is that I love my son and the rest of it matters very little.

Waves of visitors, relatives, food, little sleep, movies on the couch, board games, a crying, pooping, sleeping, bright-eyed baby boy. More baby clothes than even a baby needs. Thrush. A little more awareness, a few more smiles, every day. Bopo, Oz, the Flying Burrito. A sleepy blur of time.

My bologna has a first name...

...it's O-S-C-A-R!

Important Court Case

Finally, these guys are getting their day in court!

I do think the fashion in question is incredibly stupid-looking. But to make it illegal? Ah, the American funhouse...

Wendy and Lucy

Kelly Reichardt's third film is Wendy and Lucy, in which Michelle Williams' down-and-out hipster, Wendy, searches for the director's dog, Lucy. In KR's previous film, Old Joy--not to be confused with Oldboy--I thought Lucy's performance edged out that film's leads, but here Williams holds her own.

And more so. This is a superb film and it's built around Williams like a little cabin in the redwoods. It seems somehow cozy and expansive, though there's nothing cozy about the futility, the darkness, knawing at the edges of this simple story. I'm not the first to be struck by its similarity to Carver, though it's actually based on a story by Jonathan Raymond.

I was impressed with the rigor and beauty of Old Joy, but ultimately didn't have enough curiousity about the characters to sustain the narrative minimalism. Here it was different. In Carver's best work, his effects come across in how the reader constructs the spaces between what he's given us and tries to resolve what he's denied us. Reichardt, too, allows us to know very little for sure about our heroine (that is to say, Wendy). She's "passing through," she's estranged from her family, she's counting her last hundreds in her drive across country, hoping to make it to the canneries of Alaska. Her golden retriever mix, Lucy, is pretty much all she has.

But we don't get cheap clues or clumsy exposition or voice-over or flashbacks or really anything more to help us fill in any other facts of Wendy's life. Rail-thin, she's largely desexualized in her hipster boy-clothes and cropped haircut, unless you like that sort of thing. She's still rather stunning, of course, because it's a movie and she's Michelle Williams. For that reason and because she's so down-and-out, she has our sympathy from the beginning.

And she continues to have it, for the most part, but throughout the film--and days later, it seems--many questions spin out from her circumstances, even as they deteroriate. It's a wonder to be watching a film that depends on you to help construct what you're seeing and doesn't simply spoon feed you. Wendy and Lucy, in its still, quiet way, constantly asks you to respond. What would you do in her shoes? Would you help her? How did she get here? What's the right move? How did she screw her life up like this? How far away from this am I? Your sympathies shift moment to moment as you scrutinize her more and more closely.

The film encourages--demands, really--a deep, close reading. Like Gus Van Sant's best work, Wendy and Lucy cannot merely be watched. To do so, frankly, is to risk boredom--it would be like watching someone else play a game. These films are meant to be engaged with, stepped into, like Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo.

Lucy the dog, by the way, is a remarkable screen performer. She was such a good doggie in Old Joy that she upstaged pretty much that whole movie by her very...well, joy, actually. Hmm, I think I've just realized something. Anyway, her long absence in the new film lends the story its dread, touching on, in its neo-realist way, the Northwest Gothic dread of Twin Peaks, the dark whistling pines at the forest's edge a metaphor for the unspeakable state of nature beyond.

We fear for Wendy that, though things look bad now, they may get much worse just down the road.

As usual, Jon says it best

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Vermont and the National Organization for Marriage

Following closely on the heels of my last post, Vermont has now legalized same-sex marriage. Thanks to last year's political campaigns, I am on way too many liberal email lists for having signed this or that petition, or maybe even giving money somewhere along the line. So I get mail the other day, warning me about the existence of this video:



I only post this video because I don't think anyone viewing it on my blog is going to take to the streets in opposition of gay marriage from having seen it. It's pretty hilariously stupid. What I think about when I see this kind of bullshit is about the poor actors in the video. I mean, do they believe what they're shilling? or are they just whores, AKA desperate actors?

I frequently wonder myself whether I could make a commercial for an organization as detestable as this one. Some days I try to embrace the kind of hard-partying, hedonistic, omnivorous self-interest I admired so much in some of my old-school libertarian conservative buddies in college (looking at you, Lewis). Other days I can't muster the requisite self-loathing.

But if you start rejecting work on the basis of moral outrage and contempt for idiocy, how quickly your opportunities as an actor dry up.

And then there's the issue of Damon "Rainbow Coalition" Owens. Who is Damon Owens? For those of you who clicked through and actually read the linked article, I mean, holy shit: Opus Dei? That got weird pretty fast.

The capper for me is that this organization uses the acronym NOM, which was my acronym. Bummer. Thankfully, I don't think it's gonna catch on.

There's small print in the video as the "California doctor" comes on to tell her story of religious persecution at the creamy-smooth hands of the gays, which says, "The stories these actors are telling are based on real incidents. Find out more at www.nationformarriage.org" I note the lack of trailing period there, which I take to be a sign of anxiety. Will the kids find our website as easily as they can be recruited by Harvey Milk?

Won't someone please think of the children?

Really Proud of Iowa Today

Word comes today that the Iowa Supreme Court has overturned the state ban on gay marriage, making it the first Midwestern state to legalize the practice. This makes me proud, because I am a former Iowan. When I was in high school in Ottumwa, Iowa, I was one of the so-called "drama fags," for my participation in school plays, and I also got called a fag for wearing Birkenstocks to school a few years before they were cool. Thinking about that second example, well, I can kinda forgive it. I mean, I still think "fag" is a funny word - what I mean by that is it still has the capacity to sound transgressive in our absurdly P.C. world, which few words any longer can. When someone like Cartman says it, it's going to be funny, like it or not. And, you know, it's funny when you say it to your friends. Sorry.

I remember that I was putting up a poster for my literary magazine, Chautauqua, in the school cafeteria during study hall. There was a group of...what? Redneck heshers? I had moved to Iowa in 8th grade from Maryland and, even by the end of high school, I still thought of those folks as just Iowans. But redneck heshers works. So, there was a little gang of them nearby and they sent over one of their groupies to ask me if I was a "fag." I followed her back to the table to tell her boyfriends that if they had wanted to ask me out, they could just have done so. They didn't need to send their girl over to do it for them. They could not think of any clever responses, so I think they just told me to fuck off.

Here's the best part of the ruling, apart from that it's another repudiation of prejudice on the part of the courts and apart from that it allows gays and lesbians to get married:

"Same-sex marriages will be permitted in Iowa for at least two years, because the legislative process required to overturn the ruling would take that long. A constitutional amendment would require the state legislature to approve a ban on same-sex marriage in two consecutive sessions after which voters would have a chance to weigh in. Despite opposition to the ruling by Republican lawmakers, Democrats, who control the legislature, have given no indication that they intend to introduce such an amendment." (Davey & Robbins, NYT)

So the Mormons are going to have wait two years to force their bigotry on Iowans. Ha! Take that, Latter Day Dicks!