Author Archives: Jean-Paul

I Was Up Most Of The Night Watching The West Wing

Oh, Jeb Bartlett, why were you not running for President?

Well, folks, Republicans control the House, the Senate, the Presidency, and will shape the Supreme Court in their image.  And Donald Trump is at the helm.  Flying Spaghetti Monster help us.  We’re in for a bumpy ride, buckle up.

There is a lot of “oh, things won’t be too bad” and “there’s another election in four years” and “people were scared when Obama was elected” and “we can correct the ship then” going around now.  The people that are saying this look to be exclusively white and mostly male.  And they’re right, we’ll be fine.  Whatever damage Trump is able to inflict these next four years, white, male, middle America may have a few scrapes and bruises, but we’ll be just fine.  Everybody else?  Not so much.  Oh, I mean, sure, other groups will recover too.  Eventually.  The damage done to them, though, will take decades to repair.

We’re already seeing this somewhat with the Supreme Court’s decimation of the Voting Rights Act back in 2013.  “Congress just needs to tweak some things, what could possibly go wrong?”, John Roberts said, apparently having no historical background into the realities of voter suppression efforts both past and present.  Three years later, still no tweaks, voter suppression is in full swing, and the Republican “fix” is likely to be a simple repeal of it altogether.

Then there’s the absolutely terrifying reality of Rudy Guiliani as Attorney General.  For those not keeping count at home, we have an incoming President who won in large part on whipping up fear of Muslims that is likely to appoint a person who has spent every day since 9/11 whipping up fear of Muslims.  How do you think that’s going to turn out for Muslims this next four years?  You think things are going to get magically better for them if we manage to vote Trump out?

Oh, and did I mention that the incoming President thinks abortion should be illegal and women should be punished if they have one and he chose as a Vice President one who feels exactly the same?  And did I mention that states have been biting at the edges of Roe v. Wade for over eight years now and there are more states in Republican control now?  Oh, and there’s that pesky fact that Republicans now control the entire Legislative Branch of the federal government.  How much more damage do you think they’re going to be able to do in the next four years?  How many years post-Trump do you think it will take to repair that damage?

Latinos?  My imagination just comes up with way too many scary scenarios for them.  The mind boggles.

Of course, there’s also the rest of the world to consider.  The U.S. has still not fully recovered from George W. Bush’s World Tour of Bombardments.  Obama has deftly rebuilt our reputation with our allies fairly well, but the bombardments continue.  NATO being scrapped is an actual possibility with Trump.  His statements on the rest of the world have been so bizarre that really anything is possible.

I don’t know what to say except sorry, world.  Sorry, women.  Sorry, minorities.  LGBT community.  Religions other than Christian.  I really thought we were better than this.  I was wrong.

The One Thing I Am Certain Of In This Election

Entirely too many people are going to vote for Donald Trump today.  Right now, it’s looking like somewhere around 45% of voters will peg Donald Trump as fit to be President of the United States.  This represents a scar on the psyche of our nation that will not easily be healed.  I have no answers to give.  Like The Weekly Sift, I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation.

This election has scared the hell out of me like no election ever has.  Even though I knew logically from the beginning that it would result in the first female President of the United States, there is still agony and angst at the fact that this election is way closer than it ever should be.  There is this cult-like fanaticism surrounding Trump that is absolutely terrifying.  He’s a successful businessman despite all the evidence that the only thing he has even moderately succeeded at outside of his inherited real estate empire is building a brand around his name.  He has a great respect for women despite every single word that has ever come out of his mouth about women being abhorrent.  He has a great relationship with The Blacks despite the African-American community as close to unanimously as you can get being against him and his characterizing the community as ghettos and war zones, always to white audiences.  He has a great relationship with The Latinos as well except for the fact that he regularly demonizes them and wants to break up their families and attacked an American judge of Latino heritage and said he wasn’t able to do his job because of that heritage.  Then there’s Muslims.  At least he’s consistent with his denigrating that group without claiming any affinity with them.  That, I think most of all, his followers admire him for.

How do you combat this?  I don’t know.  Support for Trump is just so outside the realm of reality that I don’t know any solution except to stare dumbly like I would if an alien spaceship proceeded to land in front of me.  Never since I’ve been politically active has there been someone so distinctly unqualified to be President and yet here we are with Trump having a non-zero chance of winning.  When Sarah Palin hit the national spotlight with her ill-conceived Vice Presidential nomination, I was convinced we couldn’t get any lower as a nation.  Trump is the super-Palin. playing to even baser fears and even less articulate, and I have no faith anymore that we have hit bottom.  Flying Spaghetti Monster save us.

Movie Review: Doctor Strange

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A good mix of drama, comedy, and action backed up by Benedict Freakin’ Cumberbatch.

With “Doctor Strange”, magic enters the Marvel universe.  It is a difficult topic to broach in a world of superheroes with pretty well defined powers.  Magic is amorphous.  What exactly can’t you do with magic?  Well, uh, nothing?  Then how do you create a compelling movie featuring a bunch of people who are basically limitless?  Sounds impossible, but “Doctor Strange” succeeds.

Much of the success of this movie has to do with pacing.  First off, you have to devote a decent amount of time to Doctor Strange’s origins and there’s a lot of material to work with given he’s an egotistical, self-centered and brilliant neurosurgeon who loses it all and turns to mystic medicine to try to get it all back again.  Second, sure, magic is unlimited, but it’s also really difficult and most of the world destroying magic is well out of the reach of everyone except our hero and a few other trusted souls.  Third, put lots of moral restrictions on the use of said spells so that they would be used only in the direst of circumstances.  It’s not perfect, but it works well for this movie.

The thing that works best about this movie is the comedy.  It is interspersed throughout and fits perfectly within the dialogue and the personalities of the characters.  Most comes from Doctor Strange himself and you will probably not be surprised to see that Benedict Cumberbatch has exquisite comic timing.  In a world of infinite retakes and precision editing, you don’t really know who the good comedian is, the actor or the post-production people, but regardless, it works.

The action in the movie consists mostly of time warping and running through fractals and twisting landscapes while martial artsing with various magic-conjured weapons.  It is mostly well done, but can be a bit disorienting at times, but no more so than most modern action scenes are.  It’s kind of half psychedelic trip and half “Inception”.

“Doctor Strange” is so far outside the norm of Marvel superheroes, it’s hard to rank it with the others.  It is definitely one of the more entertaining and engrossing of the universe.  If you can look past the all-encompassing nature of magic, you will likely enjoy this one.

As a postscript, I think this is the first Marvel movie which I understood both closing credit Easter eggs.  Not to give much away, but they promote the next Thor movie and the next Doctor Strange villain.

Trump Wins!

After 108 years, the Chicago Cubs have finally won the World Series!  And the first seal of the Trumpocalypse has been opened.  Actually, it may be the third or fourth seal.  Wikileaks and the FBI need to be thrown in there somewhere too, I think.

Growing up, I was a huge Cubs fan.  This was complicated slightly by the fact that I also lived on the South Side.  And while it’s true that my friends and I went to many more Sox games than Cubs games growing up, thanks to the Sox basically giving away tickets, we were, at heart, Cubs fans all the way.  We would watch every game we could.  I recall senior year in high school, my best friend had a van with a tiny black and white TV in the back and we both got out after 8th period but would wait in the parking lot in the back of that van watching the Cubs play until our brothers got out after 9th period.  We would play baseball almost daily during the summer.  I was known for my outstanding skills in the outfield.  I remember a black kid that played with us once telling me that I played just like Andre Dawson when I just wanted to be compared to Andy Van Slyke.  Good times.

As I grew older, I slowly withdrew from baseball.  There was still nothing like going to see the Cubs play at Wrigley Field, but my interests turned to other thing and gone were the days of my being able to name every starting lineup and rattle off statistics of who batted what in 1987, though the latter is more because of my obsession with the Earl Weaver Baseball video game in which my friends and I would play entire seasons against each other and my lead off hitter was Vince Coleman who hit .405 for me with 45 home runs and 80 stolen bases.

I can still talk baseball, but I couldn’t even name the Cubs starting lineup at the beginning of this season.  Needless to say, besides knowing that the Cubs had a young team and that Theo Epstein had done a good job putting a talented team together and that Joe Maddon was an unbelievable manager, I didn’t follow the Cubs too closely this year besides going to a couple games and getting regular updates from my mom and brother who have managed to keep the obsession.  That changed when the Cubs made it past the Division Championship.  I started watching games again and I have to say, the Cubs team is just electric.  They are talented, young, and just the right amount of brash.  And, boy, they are a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Game seven of the World Series was one of the most exciting games I have ever watched.  It was a roller coaster of emotion, going from cool confidence that the Cubs have got this to pacing back and forth when the Indians tied it up, then to relief as the Cubs pulled ahead again, and back to nail biting agony as it gets tied up once again to go into extra innings.  Then, finally, in the 10th the Cubs pull ahead and make the bottom of the 10th one of the most harrowing sports experiences you will ever come across before finally winning.  And Chicago goes wild.

I wasn’t part of the over 300,000 people that descended upon Wrigley Field after the Cubs victory.  I was a mile away, sitting at home, listening to the celebrations that were going on all around me.  The cheering lasted well into the 1:00 hour.  Raucous, but mostly peaceful.  Chicago has a history of over-celebrating their victories, but that didn’t happen this time.  Kudos to the residents and the police for showing the world how it’s done.

Now, a new day dawns and the Eamus Catuli sign resets to AC00000000.  People are calling off of work and Starbucks is serving a few more hangover cures than usual.  Do the Cubs have the makings of a dynasty?  I think yes.  Regardless, their team sure makes baseball a whole lot more interesting.

And if the Cubs’ win portents a Trump presidency so be it.  At least Chicago got to see the Cubs win the World Series before Trump accidentally glasses over the city with a nuclear bomb.

The Trump Doesn’t Fall Too Far From The Tree

Anyone watch the Tammy Duckworth/ Mark Kirk debate last night?  Anyone?  Hello, is this thing on?  Well, let me tell you, you missed something.  You want to know how the Republican party got to Trump?  Look no further than Mark Kirk.  Kirk, for all intents and purposes, is Trump’s more restrained brother.  He is the friendly face that Republicans put forward to hide the rot just beneath the surface.  Kirk dropped that friendly face last night.

Really, you should go watch it (part 1) (part 2) (part 3).  It’s only 90 minutes and the recording kind of sucks at points, but still worth it.  What better do you have to do?  If you want an object lesson on what white male privilege, look no further.  Here are some notes to watch for:

He actually cuts Duckworth off in the middle of her answer when she’s saying that his stroke does not disqualify him from being a Senator.  Well, the stroke doesn’t, but your rudely interrupting for no reason certainly should.  He does this throughout.  It was also weird how he was always looking away from her when she talked.  Not sure what’s up with that.  He also mocked Duckworth’s family’s immigration story.  That’s probably when he’s most Trump-like and what should cause him the most harm.  One thing that will probably not get much traction, but should, is Kirk’s mocking dismissal of Duckworth’s plan for free college tuition and its $60 billion price tag which he compares to the moon landing which cost $25 billion.  This shows a criminal ignorance of inflation.  NASA says that it would cost $104 billion to send someone to the moon today.  He either doesn’t understand transgenderism or is uncomfortable talking about it because he switches to gay rights when asked about transgender protections.  “She is so arrogant” before getting cut off for speaking out of turn.  Again, visions of Trump dance in my head.  Another telling moment is when Kirk refers to “real Republicans and real Democrats” implying that Duckworth is not.  Duckworth’s expression when Kirk asks if she’d go to 23 and Me to verify that nominees fit the check boxes that she wants is priceless.  The whole “can’t we just find the best person for the job” is so ignorant.  Yes, we should, but there is no such thing as “the best”.  There are a bunch of people equally qualified and wanting to find an equally qualified Asian woman for the Supreme Court instead of a white male is just common sense.  He interrupts the one female panelist when she’s asking a question about Congressional approval ratings.

You can see in Kirk the steady march to Trump.  He is so dismissive of Duckworth in both mannerism and speech.  Kirk doesn’t by any means represent the beginning of the march to Trump, but he is indicative of how we got to where we are today.

And wow is Duckworth polished.  “Families like mine are the ones who bleed first” when talking about letting people know the costs of war is one of the best line I’ve heard in a long time.  I also liked “if you need a high capacity magazine to go hunting, you’re a very bad hunter.”

As an aside, it would be awesome to see an ad campaign featuring “The Trump Doesn’t Fall Too Far From The Tree” which highlights Trump apples falling off the tree while spouting his brand of nonsense and then other Republican candidates spouting the same nonsense while falling off the tree as well.

Donald Trump Accomplishes The Impossible

After the dust settled from the Presidential Primaries, it was a foregone conclusion that I would be voting for Hillary Clinton.  This wouldn’t be a “hold your nose” vote, nor would it be a “lesser of two evils” vote (which dumbs down the definition of evil to ubiquitousness).  She is accomplished and fire-tested over 30+ years.  She has a decently detailed plan for her vision for the U.S., even if that plan is a little wishy-washy around the edges.  In other words, she is the consummate politician.  That is not a compliment.  But nor is it a condemnation.  It is simply a recognition of a reality that should be obvious to all if it weren’t for the mythology that has been built around the Clintons throughout the preceding decades, only a fraction of it truthful.  Yes, there are some serious head scratchers in that fraction of truth, but not a single bit of it is outside the realm of what anyone with 30+ years of public service while in the limelight of the 24-hour news cycle would find attached to themselves.  Unlike everyone else running for President this year, it is nigh impossible to make the case that Hillary Clinton is unqualified to become President of the United States unless you throw a heaping spoonful of lies and deceit into your argument.

Like most Presidential elections, with the glaring exception of Obama’s first term, this would be a vote where I do my duty, choose the best person for the job, and vote.  That person this year would be Hillary Clinton.  Sure, there was a twinge of excitement that I would be voting for the first female President of the United States, but mostly this would be an unemotional vote for the correct choice.  Then came Donald Trump.  I have been asking for decades why anyone thought Trump was a good anything.  Even if his businesses were wildly successful (which they aren’t), he has always been a blowhard and a bully and yet people of all spectrums looked up to this man as a paragon of capitalism.  It baffles me that the sheen is still on that polished turd of a man for 40% of the population, but it feels good that he is finally being shown to millions as the horrible human being he always has been.  In fact, he is worse than even I could have imagined.  Republicans have been playing around the edges of the basest fears of the United States’ psyche for decades now, but Trump has cannonballed right in, gotten out of the pool, shook like a wet dog getting everyone soaked and then cannonballed right back again and repeated that cycle ad nauseum this election cycle.  It’s been like a horrible accident that you can’t look away from.

Given all of the above, I have gone from studiously making the right choice to absolutely gleeful that I will be voting for Hillary Clinton.  A feat, I would not have predicted going into this election.  Congratulations, Donald Trump, you have accomplished the impossible.  FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, BITCHES!  I actually donated some money, which again is the only time besides Obama’s first term that I have done so.  Hillary winning is pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point unless she gets unmasked as an alien or something equally ridiculous, but I think it is important not that Hillary win in a landslide, but that Trump lose in a landslide.  I am happy that Trump has exposed this face of the United States.  I think it is a necessary part of healing wounds that have festered for decades, but it is equally important for the rest of us to stand up strongly and declare that Trump is not who we are.  Republicans especially need to make this clear.  You may disagree with Hillary on almost every issue, but it is better to have someone you disagree with in the Oval Office than it is to have someone who cares only for himself in that seat behind that desk.

As a final aside, I made a prediction at the beginning of this campaign that Clinton would defeat Trump by somewhere close to 20% of the popular vote and an electoral landslide.  It is shaping up to be an electoral landslide with Clinton decently ahead in almost every battleground state, but as to the popular vote, well, not so much.  Clinton is starting to push +10% ahead in some national polls, which is still amazing, but the third party candidates are staying stubbornly strong at 7% of the popular vote, which is also amazing.  Normally, support for third parties drops as the vote gets closer.  There has been some shrinking of third party support, but not nearly as much as previous elections.  Since this election has broken so many norms, it is hard to predict what the outcome would be if it were a two person race, but despite popular belief, third party votes tend to pull proportionally from both parties (no Nader was not a spoiler for Democrats, get over it) so if Clinton’s +10% margin continues you can assume that 55% of the third party votes would go to Clinton and 45% would go to Trump.  In other words, Clinton would get a bump of around 5.5% and Trump 4.5%, which doesn’t help my prediction much.  This means I grossly overestimated how many people would see through Trump’s facade.  There’s still time for a miracle on that front, though, and if anyone can pull it off, it’s Trump

Book Review: The Other Half Of The Sky edited by Athena Andreadis

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 5/5 stars

This may be the single best collection of multi-author science fiction short stories I have ever read.  I would recommend each and every story in this collection to anyone who enjoys sci-fi.  While some are obviously better than others, each and every story is unique, imaginative, and compelling.  Let’s get into why I like this book so much.

Women are criminally underrepresented in science fiction.  Both as authors and as protagonists.  The main theme of this book is women.  Almost all of the authors are women and every story has a woman as the protagonist.  For better or for worse, women see and interact with the world differently than men and that can be seen in their writing, which in this case is definitely for the better.  This book treats you to some completely different worlds that you won’t find in the minds of men and even those worlds that could come from the minds of men are seen in a polarized light that reveals a different side of familiar scenes.

I have a passion for language.  And by that, I mean that you don’t want to get me started on how stupid gendered nouns and pronouns are and how they reinforce gender stereotypes.  That’s why it was pleasant to see that some of the stories in this collection embrace gender fluidity as a norm.  It is a concept somewhat on the fringes of sci-fi and only normally used as an afterthought to shape a world instead of being front and center as it is in the stories in this book.  Given the gender fluidity of humans, of course aliens may be much more gender fluid, of course future humans may fully embrace their own gender fluid nature.  Reading these stories it’s kind of a “well, duh” moment that these ideas would be explored but it’s good to have them explored nonetheless.  And while it may be somewhat discomfiting to some, reading gender neutral pronouns like zie and zir and zem in a story, it is a great introduction to those who still think of gender as binary.

If you like science fiction, you should run out and get this book right now.  If you like the stories in this book, you should run out and get more books by the authors in question.  I haven’t had a feeling of such pure delight reading sci-fi in quite some time and this book completely put me in my sci-fi happy place.  That said, this is also what I would call softer science fiction so it is also very accessible to those not really into science fiction.  I don’t mean that to sound like an insult, as the worlds created in this book are rich and complex, but they are told more from a viewpoint of taking the advances in technology for granted, like we would if we were writing a story where someone calls someone on their cell phone, instead of getting bogged down in technical details of warp drives and tachyon fields and such.  That’s how I define soft vs. hard science fiction.  Regardless, everyone should buy this book and give the authors all their monies.

Movie Review: Birth Of A Nation

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A somewhat faithful retelling of Turner’s Rebellion with some campy Hollywood crap thrown in for kicks.  Pretty good acting, though.

Turner’s Rebellion is a very strange footnote in history to build a narrative reclaiming movie over.  “Narrative” isn’t the right word, but I can’t come up with a word that fits.  For those of you who don’t know, the original “The Birth of a Nation” movie was both groundbreaking movie making and pretty racist in its portrayal of Blacks as lesser human beings and the KKK as righteous protectors.  So when a Black filmmaker/writer/actor creates a movie called “Birth of a Nation”, as Nate Parker has done, there are strong overtones of reclamation of a racist past in the hopes that people will remember the latter instead of the former.  That’s why it’s strange to me to use a story of a religious zealot who led a failed slave revolt that indiscriminately killed slave-holding families and resulted in the brutal subjugation of both slave and freed Black as a vehicle to reclaim that narrative.

Then there’s Nate Parker’s unfortunate history of taking advantage of a drunk and passed out woman as a sophomore in college, of which he was acquitted of rape charges, of which he also shows no remorse even though he admits it was morally wrong, whatever that means.  Though horrible, this wouldn’t be germane to the movie at all if it wasn’t for Parker’s use of two ahistorical rape scenes (one absolutely brutal) to drive Nat Turner’s quest for vengeance.  Using the rape of a woman as a plot device for a man to take revenge is lazy film-making at its worst.  It’s inexcusable in modern film.  Especially for a film which has Oscar buzz.  Doubly especially for a film created by a man who you can’t help but wonder is saying, “What I did isn’t rape, THIS is rape”.

Despite all of its baggage it’s a decent enough movie, though I’m not sure why there were such rave reviews leading up to its release.  There are some brilliant moments, capped in my mind by the hauntingly sad rendition of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”, and great acting all around.  These pluses kind of get overshadowed by pointless Hollywood moments like “the face-off” and “the betrayal”, of which the former is eye rolling and the latter is ham-handed.  All of this leads me to the conclusion that “Birth of a Nation” will only be remembered for Nate Parker’s unfortunate choices both in life and in story choices and not as a narrative redefining film.

America’s Penis Is About To Get Blown

Hurricane Matthew is currently bearing down on Florida’s east coast and it’s still a doozy.  140 MPH sustained winds and showing signs of possible strengthening.  Current forecast shows it moving straight up the east coast of Florida, tickling Georgia and South Carolina and then circling around for a possible second hit of Florida.  Ouch.  There’s also a possibility that it will then cross Florida and hit the Gulf of Mexico whose warm waters might turn it into a hurricane once again, but that’s too far in the future to predict with any accuracy.  You can check its progress here.

This is shaping up to be a very serious threat to Florida.  Not only will southern Florida have to deal with the hurricane surge itself, but it may come just as it is also experiencing high tide in the middle of the night.  You’ll recall what happened to New York when a similar scenario happened with hurricane Sandy which only had 70 MPH sustained winds at the time.  If you know anyone in eastern Florida, be sure to let them know that this isn’t a hurricane to mess around with.  Get away from the sea and stay indoors.

If Matthew does strengthen and continue along its projected path, we could be getting an early glimpse of what the state of Florida will look like in 50-100 years with the predicted sea level rise due to general warming and the ice caps shrinking.  Of which, the Arctic just experienced its second lowest ice extent minimum by the way.  So yeah, things are really shaping up for planet Earth.

Movie Review: The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: A movie with some charm but pales in comparison to the 1960 version.  A little long but still better than “Seven Samurai” in that it didn’t waste an hour showing a peasant crying in a barn.  “But look at Kurosawa’s masterful use of lighting and shadow”, blah blah blah.

I can really sum up this review by just saying go see the 1960 version of the movie and be done with it.  But that might just be nostalgia talking so a reviewing I shall go.

When looking for when the original movie was released, I discovered that there was also a TV series with the same premise back in 1998-2000.  So yeah, this ground has been covered quite extensively.  And there’s good reason for that.  It’s a compelling story filled with a motley bunch of do-gooders and over the top bad guys and underdogs who persevere despite adversity.  Really, though, it’s the motley bunch of do-gooders that we’re here to see.  2016 doesn’t disappoint in that respect.  The cast of misfits, led by Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt, are entertaining if a little flat around the edges.  The villain, played by Peter Sarsgaard, is sufficiently over the top without being cartoonish.

The biggest issue with this movie, and maybe the original suffered from it as well but I do not recall, is one of motivation.  Why are these seven people helping these poor villagers in what is almost certainly a suicide mission?  The only two that really make solid sense are Chisolm’s (Denzel Washington), pride and revenge, and Jack Horn’s (Vincent D’Onofrio), piety and righteousness.  Jack Horn is probably the best character in the film and despite little face time, he manages to tell a complete story.  The rest vary from “to get my horse back” to “I am a Comanche” to “I’m with him”.  More depth here would have been much appreciated and it is the one thing I appreciated about Kurosawa’s original.

My one other major complaint is how lazy the action was.  The final fight was kind of an underpants gnome version of a plan.  We’ll put almost everyone out in front of the town and somehow this will lead the bandits into the middle of town where we can pick them off.  This abhorrent plan could be forgivable if it led to some cool, if useless, action sequences, but there was not much to really see.

Like I said at the beginning, just go see the 1960 version if you’ve never seen it.  Barring that, just wait for this movie to appear on your favorite streaming service.  It’s not a bad movie, but it’s been done before and better and you have better things to do with your life.

Oh, and funny story.  For the longest time I thought Jack Horne was played by the guy that played Hodor on “Game of Thrones”.