Good Evening

Tonight was my idea of a good evening. But before we get to the why, let's catch up on the Old Business.

Saw The Two Towers. It was pretty much what I expected. You don't need a review from me, they are everywhere. My only disappointment was that two very key (and highly visual) scenes from the book (one the denoument of the whole thing, fer pete's sake) was not present in the film. I think it was a mistake to leave this out, even if they include it in the next film (and why should they do that? The scenes were in The Two Towers, not Return of the King. If you're going to pride yourself on making films closely tied to the spirit and narrative of the books, you do not add scenes from one book into the film of another book).

As a result of an idea I had earlier this evening, I will soon be announcing a new (additional) blog in this space that is dedicated solely to film. As I've mentioned increasingly often in these ... er, pages? ... I'm a movie fan on par with people like Roger Ebert and Kevin Murphy. Murphy wrote a book called A Year At the Movies in which he saw one film per day. To that I say "wimp!"

It occurred to me that I'm interested in writing about films, but that a personal blog should have more ... variety ... than that. So we'll split that off into it's own blog. Whether I can keep that going is another thing we shall see in the fullness of time, hmmm?

On to the matter of Trent Lott. As I predicted, he has gone as Senate Majority Leader but retained his seat in the Senate. He's far too power-hungry to actually contemplate resigning of course, and he believes this move will be enough to get the story out of the papers. He's probably right, but I have news for him: this is his last term in the Senate. He'll not be re-elected (or more likely he will announce retirement when election time approaches).

Rush Limbaugh and several people like him have suggested that this brouhaha over Lott's remarks is at least partially the work of The Nameless Liberal Conspiracy (you know, those guys with the rainbow-coloured hoods who burn peace symbols on Republican lawns) and/or the (finger quoting, Dr. Evil voice) "Liberal Media."

Can I just point out that Democrats, Liberals, Bleeding Heart NAACP Agenda Advancers and other Enemies of the Right had absolutely nothing to gain from Lott's resignation as Majority Leader? It's not like they're going to replace Lott with a screaming liberal Democrat or anything, is it? Lott's not going to resign from the Senate, so there's no gain for the opposition at all in all of this. So much for the convenient and overused "liberal conspiracy" theory. The only way the Dems would have gained is if Lott actually left the Senate entirely (and there was nobody who thought that was going to happen) and if the Mississippi governor appointed a Dem (which he probably would have), which would have given the Dems a one-vote majority -- until the special election a few months later.

The reason nobody in the opposition cared much one way or another if Lott stepped down is that the people who were first named as most likely to succeed Lott -- Don Nickels, Mitch McConnel and Rick Santorum -- are all more or less clones of Lott when it comes to racism and their voting records on civil rights -- they are all against the concept. They all voted against the MLK holiday, they all vote against affirmative action every chance they get, and so on.

Now emerges Bill Frist, the choice of the Bush administration and (at least so far) he does indeed seem to pass the sniff test and doesn't appear to be racist. Good move, right?

Only Bill Frist is literally part owner of the powerful HMO HCA/Columbia Healthcare machine, the company that was recently fined $750 million for illegal activity and Medicare fraud. Does anyone besides me see this as a problem? What the hell is this guy doing in the Senate in the first place? I thought they had strict "conflict-of-interest" rules there but you can be in bed (literally) with an HMO and still take a job that is pivotal in the regulation of HMOs?

Whoever said "we get the government we deserve" was a genius. The hanky-panky of the Clinton administration is starting to look about as harmless as fratboy "panty raid" parties compared to the current administration. Things are definitely worse now then they were then. I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the Clinton years, and I certainly couldn't imagine it would only take two years to induce that feeling, but compared to Bush the worst thing Clinton was guilty of is "shenanigans." (South Park reference, if you don't get it -- nevermind.)

Let me put it this way: the Bush administration is so corrupt and incompetent they are making Al Gore look good! I mean really good! Now that's saying something!

Okay, enough of the Old Business, now on to the New Business. Tonight Heather and I (along with our brother Mark) went out with Suburban Limbo's Rich Grula and his wife Natalie. It is always a treat to spend time with these guys, and it was all the more enjoyable because we gathered at the Enzian Theatre (which we both have strong connections to) to see Standing in the Shadows of Motown, a lovely documentary on the Funk Brothers and their unique and largely-overlooked contribution to American popular music for the better part of two decades.

Rich has been a professional musician, and I was raised on a steady diet of documentaries, so music docs are among our favourite types of movies. This one seemed to start off as a rant about not getting paid/credit for the work, but rapidly improved into an enjoyable (if lightweight) look behind the scenes for many of the songs people around my age (40) and older will remember as the soundtrack to their childhoods. The film basically chronicles the lives and anecdotes of the brothers as they laid down the music of Motown on so many hit records it makes your head spin. Punctuating the good-natured interviews and recreations are stunning performances from the surviving members as they reunited a couple years ago with a range of guest vocalists to produce steaming-hot yet resolutely-faithful renditions of just a handful of the dozens of Number Ones they played on.

As the two oldest members of our group, Rich and I noticed a lot of omissions from the Motown stories told by the Funk Brothers -- it was like they wanted to say bad things about Berry Gordy but couldn't (so that they could get into and film in "Studio A," the legendary "snake pit" garage studio in Hitsville USA), we noticed that none of the singers who made their reputations on the backs of this band (apart from the always-real Martha Reeves) appeared at all, and we noticed that the array of singers chosen to show up at the reunion gig (Joan Osborne, Ben Harper, Bootsy Collins, Chaka Khan, Meshell Ndegeocello, Gerald Levert etc) were decidedly second-string stars. (Bootsy and Joan did great jobs of course, as did Levert and Khan, but hey Smokey and Diana aren't exactly dead, are they?)

After the movie we hung out a bit and analysed the film. The younger people, not being as familiar with the times and music, didn't have much to say except that they liked what they heard and wanted to hear more. It's stunning to realise that these cats played on more Number One hit records than Elvis, The Beatles, The Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones combined. If the film plays your town, and you remember names like The Supremes, The Contours, Smokey Robinson and Little Stevie Wonder fondly, you won't want to miss this. If you can't see the movie before it hits DVD, at least buy the soundtrack.

After the movie we went to grab some sushi at Fuji Sushi, one of only two really world-class sushi places in Orlando. By the end of the meal all the friends (old and new) were gone and it was just me, Heather and Mark, so we ran an errand to pick up a Christmas gift (of sorts) and went home. A great way to spend an evening.

Countdown to The Two Towers

You should know first off that although I am a massive film fanatic, I am most emphatically not the sort of person who lines up early at cinemas or breathlessly awaits the opening of a new film. I enjoy watching movies, not being manipulated by the PR departments. Most mainstream films get a solid yawn from me (though I have to admit that the last year or two has given audiences a bumper crop of decent mainstream films compared to the last decade).

That said, I am in fact rather keen to see the next Lord of the Rings film, The Two Towers. I've avoided most reviews and websites known to spoil (even though I've read the book), and I will likely go to a "sneak preview" of the film on Tuesday midnight. I can't recall the last time I so eagerly anticipated the release of a mainstream, big-budget film, though it was probably for The Empire Strikes Back.

Just from the trailers at Apple's web site, I'm assured that the same energy, attention to detail and clear love is present in the second film -- and it looks like the sense of scale, of epic, of vastness has been preserved as well. What's remarkable about the first film is that it hits what I think is exactly the right balance between "look at our wonderful scenery and sfx, so beautifully photographed" and "enjoy our wonderful characters and set-pieces." Few films get that right (the second Harry Potter movie certainly didn't), but again this is one mega-mainstream Hollywood epic that clearly has one man's obsessive love written all over it, and that has made all the difference. Would that George Lucas could feel that way about his franchise anymore.

It's almost silly to say "I'll let you know my opinion of the film after I see it," since I am clearly going in prepared to love it, and there is every indication that it won't let me down in the slightest. Only if something is incredibly badly handled will I bother mentioning it here.

Before I take leave of this topic, though, I have to pass along the best laugh I've gotten related to the film: Phillip French, movie critic of The Observer (UK) dashed off what I think is the best comment on the film in his review -- he calls the film "Look Who's Tolkien Too." He also comments on the fact that the new film does not contain much (hardly anything) in the way of reprises for those foolish enough not to have at least seen the first film.

For me personally, I think this is a plus on several levels. I doubt the absence of a summing-up will confuse newcomers too badly -- they will enjoy it on the level of a sword-buckling, fantasy quest story (particularly this film, as the book on which it is based is probably the most action-packed of the three), and then later they can dig deeper and get the other layers too. Of course the lack of a reprise also enables the film to avoid going over the three-hour mark, which is considered pushing it in today's attention-challenged world. It's sad that we as a society find it hard to actually shut off our fucking cell phones for three lousy hours these days, isn't it?? Pathetic, I call it.

Finally, think people in general and critics in particular tend to badly over-estimate the need for full explanations to "set up" a film or story. I didn't watch Doctor Who from the first episode forward in chronological order, yet I have absorbed it by osmosis over the years. You don't need to see Star Wars in any particular order either -- indeed audiences in the future may well watch it in numerical order rather than chronological order, as Lucas intends. You pick up on the layers of continuity in things like South Park when you see them all, but you don't actually have to watch them in order -- your brain will do the sorting just fine, provided you have any kind of analytical abilities that is. So it might actually be a help, rather than a hindrance, to read the book after the film, or see the second one before the first, or read The Return of the King before The Fellowship of the Ring.

I should also quote another paragraph of French's excellent review:

Setting the second Harry Potter film beside this second Tolkien confirms with even greater clarity the difference detected between the two enterprises when the first movies appeared together a year ago. Though both are eclectic in their mythic and literary sources, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is to The Two Towers what glossy pantomime versions of Robinson Crusoe and Aladdin are to the Daniel Defoe novel and the Arabian Nights stories. These Tolkien films have a weight and seriousness that very few sword-and-sorcery pictures of the past 30-odd years have attained.

I will refrain from quoting his brilliant final paragraph and instead encourage any of you who have interest to read it yourselves. Suffice to say his sentiments ring true and are exceedingly well-expressed.

This Just Sums It Up So Beautifully.

I'm in complete and utter agreement with the always-thoughtful James Bow: this is frickin' beautiful.

Thank Heavens I Don't Have to Live in Mississippi

People say that I never have a kind word to say about the President. Okay, here's a kind word about the President: He did a hell of a lot better job responding to the outrage over Trent Lott's hoof-in-mouth disease than Trent Lott has done.

President Bush used strong, forceful language and firmly repudiated both Lott and the ideas Lott is now trying to pretend he doesn't endorse. Had Lott himself said something that firm, he would have been off the hook a week ago -- but he can't, because even Trent Lott can't convincingly lie that much. At his core, he's racist and thus can't bring himself to call segrationism "morally repugnant" or "untrue to the ideals of this nation" the way Bush did. That's because Lott does believe that segregation would have prevented a lot of "problems" we've had since those days.

That's the core of the problem. Nobody I've spoken to about this (mostly Republicans) believe Lott didn't mean what he said the first time. You can't fake stuff like that, and you can't hide when you say it out loud. All the "I'm sorry"'s in the world are just going to sound like "I'm sorry I said that in front of a camera" to blacks and anyone with half a brain in their heads.

Even if Lott somehow managed to grit his teeth and lie to the cameras, there's his absolutely abysmal record on race issues to haunt him. He voted against the 1981 renewal of the Civil Rights Act. He supported Bob Jones University in the brouhaha over their ban on interracial dating. He opposed the creation of a holiday commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. He championed the nomination of segregationist Charles Pickering for the US Court of Appeals (it was unsuccessful, thank heavens). He only got into Congress in the first place because he replaced his boss, arch-segregationist Bill Colmer. He is one of only a few few Senators to get consistent "F" grades from the NAACP during his three decades in Congress.

I personally don't have an opinion on whether Lott should resign his office -- he represents a pretty backward, poor and racist state (and yes, I've been there and seen this firsthand) and neither he nor the voters in that state seem to have any interest in making Mississippi anything other than the most third-world-like state in the union. They consistently show up as 50th out of 50 on most polls that measure which states offer anything like good health, good education, good social services or good jobs for their people, average literacy, average IQ and so on. This is, after all, one of the states with a confederate flag incorporated into its design.

So, as a representative of the state (both the physical state and the state of mind), he's probably doing a pretty good job. But Senate Majority Leader? Sorry, but I don't think so. I think it's past time Congresspeople on both sides of the aisle grew some balls and said "buh-bye" to Lott as Leader.

Whole Lott o' Shakin' Goin' On

Okay, let's get my biases out of the way first: I live for stuff like this. I love it when some pious piece of crap like Trent Lott puts his foot in his mouth, and it seems to happen to politicians of both stripes on a routine basis. However, it's extremely rare when anybody but a Republican says something quite this racist and shocking.

First, let's do something the Conservative Media rarely do: let's look at what Lott actually said.

"I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Most Americans are woefully ignorant of history, but Trent Lott is not among those people. He knew perfectly well when he said this that Strom Thurmond was running on the Dixiecrat ticket on a platform of segregation -- white people should be protected from black people, and black people should be isolated away from white people.

This is not a case of "oops, I didn't remember that part." You don't say you voted for Strom Thurmond for president in 1948 without also saying you are now (or at least were then) a racist. The fact that he goes on to say that if the Dixiecrats had won with their platform that we wouldn't have "these problems over all these years" is a explicit, direct and uninterpretable attack on the very concept of civil rights. In fact, he endorsed Thurman's platform in an almost identical way in remarks in Mississippi in 1980. This was not some trip of the tongue, friends.

I applaud the media for not blaming the wrong person. It would have been easy to make this about Strom Thurmond, who was and probably still is a bigot. Or maybe Strom really did have a change of heart a la former Georgia governor Lester Maddox (who I used to know personally -- he was a friend of my mother's -- and can attest that he did in fact reform, albeit in something of a simple-minded and unintentionally patronising way). I don't know how Thurmond truly feels about blacks today, I suspect he likes blacks just fine -- as long as they vote Republican. But Strom's former open racism and his views in 1948 are not the issue. The issue is that there are powerful men in this country who still hold those views, and do not repudiate them as morally wrong. Strom Thurman's former positions will, as a result of Lott's gaffe, be re-examined -- which is a very good thing. But hopefully this will not result in new hate being stirred up against Thurman. I personally can't stand the drooling old coot -- he has been nothing more than a warm body (literally) who's staff makes every decision for him for at least 20 years, just staying in place to prevent the possibility of some Democrat with a functioning brain getting into office. He barely remembers his own name, much less how to actually represent the people (the idiot people of South Carolina) who keep re-electing him. When he announced his retirement, I joked that they should replace him with Ronald Reagan to keep things consistent. But again, this controversy is not actually about Strom or his views, and so far the media have done a good job separating that from the actual fracas.

So what did Lott do when confronted with the general outrage and shock over his remarks? He issued what I would have to say is the feeblest apology I've yet seen from a politico who steps in it:

A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embrace the discarded policies of the past.

Notice how he doesn't say that the Dixiecrat platform was wrong or morally repugnant. Just that they were "discarded," as if to imply that the ideas had some worth but people just moved on. Notice how he doesn't repudiate his original remark that he's "proud" of voting for Thurmond in 1948, nor does he retract the idea that the racist Dixiecrat platform would have solved "all these problems" we've had with the uppity black folk since then.

Now, this would be a big deal if anyone of such importance had said it. Even people from Lott's own party have condemned the soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader for his remarks -- such as Family Research Council head Ken Conner, who openly called for a new Senate leader.

But I ask those of you who doubt my insistence that the concept of the "Liberal Media" is dead and gone -- what would have happened if Gore had said this? If Clinton had said this? Would the conservative New York Times really have ignored the story for five days if Gephardt or Kerry had said this? Give me a freakin' break.

I watch the mainstream TV news outlets more or less daily. Not one word about this story on CNN. Not on MSNBC either. Or Fox as far as I can tell (can't stand to watch Fox for more than a few minutes -- talk about biased!!). If Clinton had said this, the whole country would have come to a halt as every major media outlet -- not just a few editorial newspaper boards -- would have raked him over the coals. You can be sure the Democratic Party would have been quick to distance themselves as fast as possible.

But the Republicans? They shrug and ask what's the big deal, he apologised?

It's as if they don't know that Lott has for decades been closely associated with the Council of Conservative Citizens, formerly known as the Council of White Citizens -- a pro-racist group Lott once got in trouble for addressing. At the time he claimed he was "ignorant of the group's agenda" but he has continued to align himself with them. On the incredibly evil Bill O'Reilly's Fox program as recently as last week, Lott pointed with pride to an endorsement he got from the group for his idea of using US troops to protect the US from "illegal immigrant invasions." In 1992, he specifically said to the CCC at their convention that they had "the right principles and the right philosophy." According to the CCC, as of 1999 Lott was a dues-paying member. Go and visit their web site and see if you think this is the sort of group the incoming Senate Majority Leader should be affiliated with.

President Bush seems to think so -- he and his lapdog Ari "I put my foot in my mouth a lot too" Fleisher have refused to directly criticise Lott or his statement.

That Lott isn't being asked -- by his own party -- to at least step down from the Majority Leader position (if not resign outright) tells you everything you need to know about which of the two corrupted political parties (and make no mistake, they are both corrupt) has the most rotten core.

December CULTural Calendar is Up (At Freakin' Last!)

Sorry about the delay, was busy with Hanukkah. The famous Chas' CULTural Calendar for Orlando is now on display here, and if you use iCal on your Mac you can just subscribe to it thusly.

Hello Class, My Name is Mr. Substitute

Okay, so I haven't posted anything here in a while. Insert ritual self-flagellation here. Then go look up "self-flagellation" because you can't remember what it means.

If you want to know what's on my mind of late, I find it has been expressed very well indeed by the psychics at Suburban Limbo and Blowtorch Monkey Armada (latest entries). Both blogs are well worth adding to your "read list," though Rich hasn't updated his in quite a while (40 lashes with a wet noodle for him). For that matter, neither has Ultra-Deb, (she'd probably like 40 lashes with a wet noodle though).