The Movie You Are Too Scared To See

Ridley Scott and Cameron Diaz

More than once filmmaker Ridley Scott has defied Hollywood and audience expectations by bringing an unusual writer's work to the screen - Joseph Conrad ("The Duellists"), Phillip K. Dick ("Blade Runner") - and his film of writer Cormac McCarthy's first screenplay, "The Counselor", confounded critics and some audiences. But the film distills the grim and rare voice of McCarthy's take on crime, which isn't about car chases and wisecracking  buddy cops. It's a world with no heroes, no redemption.

McCarthy's story rolls out in the brutal world of drug trafficking, cartels and the barren borderlands. The cartels alone make the gangsters of American legend look like Boy Scouts. In this tale, a would-be drug deal goes bad and the cost is beyond horrifying. It's a predatory world, relentless and without morality.

It's daring, this descent into the darkness. It offers a femme fatale (Cameron Diaz) who devours everyone with pure ferocity. And perhaps it is much too honest - the viewer is without a safe haven, and most movies today just don't go there or close to there.

Scott had been trying to develop McCarthy's very dark Western novel, "Blood Meridian", into a film but Hollywood couldn't handle it - he says "It would have been rated double-X. It’s Hieronymus Bosch, the way McCarthy describes the first time you see several hundred horses with bones and feathers on them, and you can’t see a rider until you’re staring at the Comanche. It’s horrific. He writes in visual images which are spectacular, so it suits me down to the ground."

The truth, the reality of what's happening in the Southwest and Mexico as drug cartels slaughter their way to impossible wealth is hard to believe. And this film reveals what happens to a handful of people who venture into that wasteland. No romantic criminals here, no good guys rush in to save the day. 

"The Counselor" isn't a film for mainstream consumers - it's a complex and unflinching view of dark hearts in a sun-baked desert. It is one of the most haunting movies you'll ever see.

Double Secret Sex Probation

The first rule about sex education in state universities is - you can't talk about sex education in state universities.

Tennessee: Home of Lowest Wages

Sure seems debate about whether or not to increase the bottomed-out minimum wage takes place in a wacky fantasy world from a kooky Depression-era musical.

Tennessee now ranks in first place for the number of folks who earn the lowest wage possible - and some say raising that wage will bring on an Apocalypse. Truth is, more adults are on of this poverty train than teens, the wage buys less and less every day, and the state's economy won't grow because these workers have tiny buying power.

The fantasy makers won't tell you that historically, increases in the minimum wage grow an economy, rather than kill it. The denial song and dance routine we are given simply achieves one goal - workers are kept in poverty, income gaps grow, and economic growth only takes place at the very top.

Worried it might raise prices? Duh - have you bought anything in the last few months or years? Costs are always rising but wages are not. That's a doomed economy.

A Squeak Within The Roar

I toil with words and language, it's what I do. I write, I read, I arrange and rearrange the words looking for the combination which says "It" -- and "It" is always changing.

I'm often working to direct a play too, blending another writer's words with actors and other designers and artists in hopes of crafting a language of verbal and visual which an audience will enjoy on (hopefully) more than one level.

It's madness, really. The world around me provides fairly perplexed responses to such work. And it's work that's never really finished, I rewrite and refine always.

I've learned that being consumed with those constant word shufflings is fortunate in some ways - for instance, I've known since childhood the work I want to do. What drives me is not the approval of others, it's to connect clearly with those who read or listen, to share an experience.

But it is a kind of madness.

Currently, I'm working to direct 4 one-act plays for the Morristown Theatre Guild, and I am also acting in one of them, a play called "Universal Language" by David Ives. The plot of the tale is that I am attempting to con people into paying for learning a language which is total gibberish. My lines include such oddities as "gavotte kennedy doopferyu?" ... which roughly translates as "what can I do for you?"

The sounds and the intents of the words carry the meaning. And it's one of the toughest scripts I've ever tackled, and I often wonder if my brain is too rigid and old to accommodate such nonsense.

Like most folks, my brain is adjusting to text-speak and online language, which takes shortcuts and constantly creates new rules. The small notebook I always carry with me to jot down ideas and thoughts with pencil and paper seems deeply outdated. I carry a teeny computer device with me to also jot down ideas and search the worldwide web.

Madness.

Language and signs and symbols rise and converge and change and these threads of letters and words and ideas (hopefully) make some sensible cloth.

This blog and this post will likely make only a very small sound in the world of today and tomorrow. A squeak amid a cacophony. No matter. I'm stuck with who I am.

"Gavotte kennedy doopferyu?"

Four One-Act Plays In One Show

Once again I've been working with the Morristown Theatre Guild, directing this One-Act Showcase which opens next Friday.

The Guild is celebrating their 80th year with the start of this season - that makes them one of oldest businesses in East Tennessee plus the oldest community theatre in the state too.

The award winning shows in the Showcase include 3 one-acts from the collection "All In The Timing" by David Ives and a fourth one act, "Black Comedy" by Peter Shaffer.

Ives' plays include "Sure Thing", offering a young couple trying to make sure their first meeting gets off to a great start - no matter how many times they have to repeat and repeat what they say to each other; "Words, Words, Words" enacts the old saying that monkeys trapped in a room with typewriters will write a Shakespeare play - or can they?; and "Universal Language" takes audiences on a roller coaster ride when a woman tries to learn a new language that sounds like pure nonsense.

A final one act for the night is the award-winning comedy "Black Comedy" by Peter Shaffer (Amadeus, Sleuth). It's the story of what happens at a dinner party held during a power outage - the audience can clearly see the chaos, confused identities, and constant calamities taking place as the characters behave like they are in a darkened apartment in this wild physical comedy show. The story is set in NYC in 1965.

The four one-acts also focus on the very language of theatre itself and how time and place shape a story. An ensemble cast from age 17 to 60 tackle multiple roles and have made a very funny show.

Performances are March 14 -23 at First Presbyterian Church in Morristown and you can order tickets at 423-586-9260 and tickets will also be available at the door - show times are 8 pm on Friday and Saturdays, 2 pm on Sundays.

Two Kinds of Happy

There's a line in the movie "Tender Mercies" when Robert Duvall's character says "I don't trust happiness." It's a line which resonates often too well.

I don't know what to make of Happy. It throws me off. I surely like and aim for Happy, but it slips away. One must hold it lightly I suppose, and one must share it in order to make more of it.

It's tricky.

A few mega-tons of bad news, bad ideas and the actions of bad people can overwhelm Happy. Such badness might seem to beat Happy out of every soul. While pondering a response to all the negativity, I've decided to just whip up a bit of Happy to share today. Two kinds, in fact.

Both kinds are songs, new and not so new. First up, Happy as offered by Pharreli Williams and then a shot of Happy from the Rolling Stones. Happy is a challenge for me, but I keep trying. Here's to some Happy for you.

Counterfeit Meds in America

While outrage over antibiotics in chicken or beef grab headlines, critical questions about antibiotics and other meds taken by us human folk here in America point to an even more grim reality.

2004 saw the closure of the last American plant making such vital medicine. Fearing FDA oversight, companies fled overseas, so that today most antibiotics and key ingredients in other medicines are made in India and China - not a bad thing in itself, but now we find the meds you take may be fake at best, deadly at worst.

In truth many big pharma makers in India do a fine job. We know little about China since they won't let FDA folks examine their facilities.

Recent reports ( here and here) highlight deeply troubling trends:

-- The World Health Organization estimated that one in five drugs made in India are fakes. A 2010 survey of New Delhi pharmacies found that 12 percent of sampled drugs were spurious.

-- One widely used antibiotic was found to contain no active ingredient after being randomly tested in a government lab. The test was kept secret for nearly a year while 100,000 useless pills continued to be dispensed.

More tests of hospital medicines found dozens more that were substandard, including a crucial intravenous antibiotic used in sick infants.

-- India’s pharmaceutical industry supplies 40 percent of over-the-counter and generic prescription drugs consumed in the United States.

-- One federal database lists nearly 3,000 overseas drug plants that export to the United States; the other lists 6,800 plants. Nobody knows which is right.

Drug labels often claim that the pills are manufactured in the United States, but the listed plants are often the sites where foreign-made drug powders are pounded into pills and packaged.

-- Imports rule in America as we receive  80 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States, 50 percent of the fresh fruit, 20 percent of the vegetables and the vast majority of drugs, all originate overseas.

Are You What You Like?

PBS Frontline aired a program titled "Generation Like", exploring the rapid spread and rise of online activity on social media websites, which left me with several thoughts.

-- Social media users disgorge details of their lives to the world while that info is collected and sorted and stored for numerous business activities, especially marketing. But who is using who?

-- Is the world (well those parts with constant online access) joined in a brave new conversation? Are users just seeking validation via shared enthusiasms?

-- The multi-faceted chain of events which follow when a user clicks a Like button or retweets or reblogs something is vast. The reductive nature of the Like concept also is vastly multi-layered, but it strikes me as a sort of yearning for less loneliness, and a plea we share to seek some change to thought or action. "Like" encapsulates so very much.

-- Optimistically, I'm thinking the rudimentary hunt for Likes and Shares are akin to the early stages of communication, and the creation of a self identity. Optimistic, I say, but only time will reveal if people are growing, devolving, or headed into an unknown social construct.

Keeping Time in Tennessee

I mentioned earlier (in Time) the state legislature is debating a bill to stop the back and forth of Daylight Savings Time. To clarify, sponsors want Tennessee to stay forever in DST.

Some fret over the state's businesses having to adjust with other states over the time differences, though really don't we have to do that anyway?

I have no clue what might have prompted this proposal - the change or lack of it seems capricious. Still, I'd sure like it if the changes would just stop. That said, does the idea really merit legislative debate?

KnoxViews has opinions on the debate.

Tom Humphrey talks about the debate too.

What say you? 

Did Bribery Bring Red Light Cameras?

A lawsuit points to widespread bribery and gifts paving the way for the arrival and use of red light cameras in Tennessee and other states.

KnoxViews has some details.

Nashville Scene notes the cities in Tennessee - including my own here in Morristown - which should be examined.

Turn Left At Greenland - The Beatles and America

It's my earliest memory.

Watching The Beatles on TV on a Sunday in February 1964.

I was only three but this event was new, different. I can recall there was some yelling involved - my siblings were yelling and singing while watching TV standing up and jumping around. That was not they way we usually watched TV.

There had been some yelling before that too - some serious tension from my parents who did not think this Beatles thing on a Sunday of all days was good. It was bad.

Youth won out. My brother and sister and I watched it all.

My minister father really disapproved. And yet by the end of the 1960s, his hair was growing over his collar and his sideburns had gotten long. 

That night in 1964 quickly changed everything - music, clothes, politics, religion, family, fame, and much more. Billions of words have been written about every note, every song, every person linked to the band, and more arrive every day.

It's good - great even - to know I was there that night. To grow up listening to the music, waiting for new albums and new singles to get released. It seemed each release pushed at the limits of imagination. 

I've learned since that night how much work the band put into all they did. Work which changed how music was written, recorded and marketed. Business changed. Families changed. Lives changed.

Changing the world with music. It's a primal force, which many have tried to duplicate - none have.

50 years later, we all live in a world those four musicians remade. 

State Ponders Dropping Out of Daylight Savings Time

A bill has been filed to exempt the state from observing Daylight Savings Time, from Rep. Curry Todd and Sen. Janice Bowling.

I'd sure like the time changes to stop and for us to just have one time system. But there will likely be passionate debate on the topic for and against. Some things, unlike Time, never change.

Double-Secret Government in Tennessee?

"Don't ask me about my business." 

Questions for Gov. Haslam via Speak to Power:

"It would be unremarkable if this were the first time Haslam claimed special privileges to cloak his office’s doings from the public, but it’s not.

Today’s snub to transparency is part of a much larger pattern of secrecy —

• secretive relationships with high-powered lobbyists
• preference for secret tax deals with big corporations
• hiding his tax returns
• executive order to hide his income
• hidden loans to business partners
• secret pay raises for his department chiefs
• secret political slush funds

The closed-door meetings with old business partners who suddenly win no-bid contracts, the constant special interest dealing and unprecedented secrecy have wholly undermine his credibility with anyone paying attention to his actions.

85 People Own Half of the World

A study from Oxfam reveals a mere 85 people own nearly half the assets of our planet. And that means it takes combining the assets of 3.5 billion people to match what those 85 have. It's not the result of a "free market", says Oxfam. It's a calculated effort of corruption.

"The Oxfam report found that over the past few decades, the rich have successfully wielded political influence to skew policies in their favour on issues ranging from financial deregulation, tax havens, anti-competitive business practices to lower tax rates on high incomes and cuts in public services for the majority. Since the late 1970s, tax rates for the richest have fallen in 29 out of 30 countries for which data are available, said the report. This "capture of opportunities" by the rich at the expense of the poor and middle classes has led to a situation where 70% of the world's population live in countries where inequality has increased since the 1980s and 1% of families own 46% of global wealth - almost £70tn."

A  confession of sorts from a former hedge-fund manager published this week in the NYTimes blames "wealth addiction".

But that's not the problem says Salon:

"The story starts 40 years ago when most of the economic profession made the argument that deregulated markets could solve all our problems by creating more and more wealth for society. By cutting taxes on the rich, there would be more incentive to create new enterprises and jobs, and higher incomes would then flow to all—all boats would rise. By getting government out of the economy, business would be free to innovate and grow.

This push for massive tax cuts and deregulation, however, unleashed Wall Street much more than it did the “real” economy —the part that produces tangible goods and services. In fact, it led to the destruction of much of American manufacturing as financiers (corporate raiders; private equity firms like Mitt Romney’s) hollowed out corporation after corporation, loading each up with debt, and then squeezing its workforce as much as possible, including replacing it entirely by shifting the facility overseas.

Instead the “innovation” took the form of junk bonds, offshore accounts, high-risk mortgages, derivatives, CDOs and a myriad of financial tricks that step by step moved money away from productive industry and shoved into the pockets of Wall Street."

Changing Your Outraged Brain

I'm seldom a fan of the material found in Psychology Today magazine. But I noted an article this week about words and the physical effects words have on our brains and bodies.

Negative words flood the brain and body with chemicals and emotions and studies indicate the brain and body react to one negative word while a positive word has to be repeated to create similar impacts.

There are recent discussions about the apparent rise in what's being called the "Outrage Industry", as daily and hourly we see and hear stories and events which are meant to evoke powerful emotions. Some might say the public is addicted to outrage.

Way back in the mid-90s, I knew a fellow who listened every day to 6 or 7 hours of angry radio rantings from Boortz and Limbaugh and others. Day after day after day, he became sullen and angry and just plain mean. For him the world was an Us versus Them place locked in a holy war. I found it quite sad to watch him devolve into a hating machine. He became physically ill, and nearly died.

The article noted above indicates that while our brains react immediately to negative words to combat danger. A positive word, a Yes, does not do that. One researcher says a person needs 3 or 5 Yeses to equal the effects of one No.

It's very easy to drown in the oceans of outrage, some folks constantly bellow about The End of Everything.

And while negative commentary on our shared worlds can be found in abundance in the posts here on my blog, I've tried to balance that with the positive or humorous or even the silly.

So what follows is nothing less than an effort to add to the positive. Read the list of words below. You can even say them out loud and effect even more powerful change, and if others hear you, that change will spread. You can repeat this act every day too. Ready?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

TennCare Requires Enrollment on Imaginary Online System

$35 million spent for a required online system to obtain TennCare - but it doesn't exist. Tennessee politicians have made sure to fight healthcare reform at every step, no matter who gets hurt.

"The state committed $35.7 million -- $32 million of that in federally allocated money -- to a three-year contract with global cybersecurity contractor Northrop Grumman to create a new system called the "Tennessee Eligibility Determination System," or "TEDS," which will result in a new TennCare application website.

But the project, which started in December 2012, is not completed -- and there is no projection as to when it will be finished, Gunderson said."

Your History Is Being Rewritten

A chaotic event or even a mundane event might be recorded, then rewritten, then disappear, be rediscovered and rewritten many times. The furious speed at which information goes through these changes is mind boggling. These days, history is not written by winners of conflicts, it is endlessly revised by whim.

Writer William Gibson spoke about this in an interview with the Paris Review:

"Of course, all fiction is speculative, and all history, too—endlessly subject to revision. Particularly given all of the emerging technology today, in a hundred years the long span of human history will look fabulously different from the version we have now. If things go on the way they’re going, and technology keeps emerging, we’ll eventually have a near-total sorting of humanity’s attic.

In my lifetime I’ve been able to watch completely different narratives of history emerge. The history now of what World War II was about and how it actually took place is radically different from the history I was taught in elementary school. If you read the Victorians writing about themselves, they’re describing something that never existed. The Victorians didn’t think of themselves as sexually repressed, and they didn’t think of themselves as racist. They didn’t think of themselves as colonialists. They thought of themselves as the crown of creation.

We’ve gotten so used to emergent technologies that we get anxious if we haven’t had one in a while."

Whether the event is the recent chaos in Benghazi or the hysteria over "Duck Dynasty", our society seeks out revision over resolution.

Little Tree - A Christmas Gift

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look     the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel" 

little tree
By e.e. cummings

News Photos of 2013

Boston's Big Picture website always boasts stunning photography, and their year end roundup of news photos from around the world is also an impressive collection. (Click to enlarge.)

Above, a shot from massive wildfires in Australia in January of this year. 

Here's an image from August in Egypt ad that nation struggles to reinvent itself.

There are three parts to this year's collection - Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Are There No Workhouses??

Last year Republican legislators in Tennessee wanted to tie benefits for food, clothing and shelter to a child's grades in school. Now there's another execrable idea targeting needy children again. At least this chucklehead is from Georgia.

The idea: make poor kids sweep up the lunchroom in order to be fed. 

He also opines kids lack work ethics at schools and they do nothing yet earn respect and benefits. He joins the Mythmakers who think schools are the hard scrabble exclusive proving grounds teaching that it's a dog-eat-dog world.

Go into any school and I'll promise you you'll find students working on many assigned jobs, from cleaning to oversight of classrooms, grounds, and more. All students are involved, regardless of their parents' income.

And yeah, you will change the world if you demonize hungry children. Just not for the better.