Roger O Green

The Coates book, Black-ish, & other things

Have you seen the common core math? [Note: I have. He’s not far wrong.]

It was days before our Albany presbyter (think bishop – but not really) was to lead the adult education class about race and white privilege and the book Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

That Thursday morning, I watched Black-ish, the ABC sitcom. (I’m a notorious TV time shifter.). And it was good, very good. Sojourners, a journal that “sits at the intersection of faith, politics, and culture,” noted that In Less Than Two Minutes, This Clip From ‘black-ish’ Explains Why Racism in America Isn’t Over. And the New York Times declared With Police Brutality Episode, ‘black-ish’ Shows How Sitcoms Can Still Matter.

Of course, the episode referenced the Coates book, even having the author on briefly. One of those shows that if you get a chance to see, you should. Oh, and read the book, which I should review, shouldn’t i?

A restless night

The night before, I had been watching Modern Family another ABC sitcom. The plot was about a thunderstorm knocking out the power. Suddenly, the loudest thunderclap I think I’d ever heard went off, and I quite literally jumped out of my chair, startled. I turned off the TV.

This blast woke up my household. While The Wife was able to return to sleep, the Daughter could not.

You know I don’t think I can write an excuse for school saying, “Daughter is a little fuzzy today because of thunder.” Heck, I was a little fuzzy myself.

3+3 does not equal 94

Somehow, I got sucked into a Facebook conversation about facts.

A: [who I know]: If I were your math teacher and you told me 3 + 3 = 94 and argued that you were right, I’d have to ask you if you had actually read your lesson in the book…

B: Well that depends on who is doing the math. Now you have to show the 15 steps you took to come up with that 6.

A: you mean I have to show that I’m holding up 3 fingers on each hand and counting them?

B: Have you seen the common core math? [Note: I have. He’s not far wrong.]

Eventually, I threw in my six cents.

“3+3=12 in base 4, 11 in base 5, and 10 in base 6. Just sayin’.”

A: In case anyone is wondering, Roger is a lot smarter than your average person – Not a good one to argue with. He was on Jeopardy.

Damn, I get a lot of mileage being on a game show nearly 20 years ago.

Movie review: Hail, Caesar!

What is it about kidnapping that the Coens embrace so readily?

I went with a couple of friends to the Spectrum Theatre on a Sunday afternoon to see the new Coen brothers movie Hail, Caesar!.

It “follows a day in the life of Eddie Mannix [Josh Brolin], a Hollywood fixer for Capitol Pictures in the 1950s, who cleans up and solves problems for big names and stars in the industry. But when studio star Baird Whitlock [George Clooney] disappears, Mannix has to deal with more than just the fix.”

When it was over, I smiled knowingly. I laughed a lot and thought it was a smart picture with nifty references to a Hollywood of a different era. But my two companions were confused! One said, “What did it MEAN?” And judging by the amazingly bad audience reaction on Rotten Tomatoes – only 45% positive, though 82% of the critics liked it – they were not alone.

A lot of the complaints I’ve read were that other films touched on the specifics of movie making better than Hail, Caesar! That may be true, but I enjoyed this particular iteration. As the review from NPR noted:

“Some of the best scenes hail from the films within the film. The best of these is No Dames!, a sailors-on-shore-leave musical starring Bert Gurney (Channing Tatum, who is really a pretty good dancer. Who knew?). This long segment is… [one of] the most delightful production number in a major motion picture… It’ll also make you miss the days long before the Age of Ultron, when movie titles had exclamation points instead of colons.

“Hail, Caesar!’s… pleasures are piecemeal and peculiar, like the way Sir Michael Gambon, the film’s narrator, elongates the phrase “in Westerly Malibu.” Or the way Tilda Swinton plays a pair of identical — and fiercely competitive — twin gossip columnists. Or the way that a workprint of Hail, Caesar! includes a title card reading DIVINE PRESENCE TO BE SHOT.”

Also great was Alden Ehrenreich, previously unknown to me, as Hobie Doyle, a western film star out of his element in a different genre film; Ralph Fiennes as movie director Laurence Laurentz; and Scarlett Johansson as an Esther Williams-type aquatic performer. Frances McDormand and Jonah Hill had small roles as a film editor and a “person.”

Two questions:

What is it about a kidnapping that the Coens embrace so readily, in Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, and Fargo?

Does one need to be a cinephile to enjoy Hail, Caesar!? I would not think so, but I could be wrong.

Run That Body Down

How long you think that you can run that body down?

February is often tough. In addition to the regular stuff – work, home, Friends of the Albany Library, church choir, et al, there’s Black History Month at church. I had everything arranged, or so I thought, but it never seems to work out as it is planned.

For instance, I had arranged for someone to talk about Black Lives Matter during the adult education hour on February 21. But a week and a half earlier, the speaker had an accident, which I found out because of Facebook. (See, it CAN be useful.)

A few days later, I asked if she could still do the gig, and the Friday before the Sunday class, she wrote that she could not. But she offered me a substitute and told me I’d get that person’s contact information.

By Sunday morning, when I had no info, I started throwing together some articles that I thought could start a discussion, such as Black Struggle Is Not a Sound Bite: Why I Refused to Meet With President Obama and I Don’t Discuss Racism With White People. But I barely touched on the former and didn’t even get to the latter as we discussed the history of what got us to the point in the American culture where Black Lives Matter is even necessary.

Two days later, I had no voice. My throat was sore, and I realized I was exhausted. I missed three days of work.

A certain Paul Simon song from his first, eponymous 1972 album came to mind:

Went to my doctor yesterday
She said I seem to be okay

She said “Paul, you better look around
How long you think that you can run that body down?
How many nights you think that you can do what you been doin?
Who, now who you foolin?”

LISTEN to Run That Body Down here or here.

H is for hero pose

A couple surgeons on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy utilized the superhero pose.

“When you’re weary, feeling small,” taking on the hero pose, specifically the stance of a comic book superhero may help.

“The ‘superhero stance’ — the physical pose in which the superhero stands with legs spread apart, arms on hips, elbows bent…. projects power. It’s an example of what psychologists refer to as an open posture, in which limbs are spread out in a way to take up more space…

“Open postures contrast with closed postures, in which the body takes up relatively little space. Numerous psychological studies have demonstrated that open postures convey a sense of the individual having power and closed postures convey a sense of the individual having little power.”

One article suggests the methodology: “Have a high-stakes event in the next few minutes? Before it begins, find a place to strike some grand heroic pose(s). Hold the aforementioned pose(s) for 2 minutes. That’s it.”

It has become so much of the culture that a couple of surgeons on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy utilized the technique.

Amy Cuddy, one of the researchers on power posing, along with Dana Carney and Andy Yap, has done a well-regarded TED talk on the topic.

John Marcotte has also done a TED talk, with an emphasis on getting women and girls to #PoseLikeASuperhero. He “challenges the audience to look beyond what is labeled as ‘girly’ or ‘feminine’ by covering everything from his superhero loving daughters, and the problem with genderized toy aisles, to the effects that Barbie, Mrs. Potato Head, ‘princess culture,’ and Frozen have on both girls and boys.”

Totally coincidentally, the Daughter is working on some Science Fair project involving the Pose, with herself as the subject. How one objectively measures feeling “better” I don’t know, yet.

ABC Wednesday – Round 18