Roger O Green

Movie Review: Heart of A Dog

Heart of a Dog is a documentary by artist/musician Laurie Anderson about her very deep relationship with her canine.

It’s Tuesday, November 17, the last day that the Spectrum 8 Theatre will be under the current ownership. Come Friday, November 20, the cinema will reopen under the control of the chain, Landmark Theaters.

The current owners insist the new company will keep it just the same. Keith and Sugi Pickard gave me that message the previous Saturday at the APL Foundation Library Gala, and Keith, who’s helping with the concession stand queue repeats the message this night to the Wife and me. I’ve been going there, or to its predecessor, the 3rd Street Cinema in Rensselaer, since 1980.

There are a number of films I’d like to see. But the one playing that seemed avant-garde, least mainstream, most Spectrum-like, was Heart of a Dog, a documentary by artist/musician Laurie Anderson about her very deep relationship with her canine, but also about her late mother, post 9/11 surveillance, and memory. Her late husband Lou Reed makes a brief appearance. It’s impressionistic and meditative and contemplative and musical, and occasionally very funny. Go read some nice reviews, 97% positive on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sugi Pickard watched that single screening. So did Cathy Frank, the legendary namesake of Cathy’s Waffles in ’80s Albany, who posted her disastrous-looking but still apparently tasty waffles on her Facebook page. It was a Smallbany event of sorts, the end of an era, like the apparent demise of Metroland after 38 years, or the closing of Bob and Ron’s Fish Fry in Albany after 67 years.

Oh, and it was my mom’s birthday, and Laurie was remembering what thing her mom said to her that most sticks to her mind. And it got me thinking some more about MY mom’s words to me. And it was…soothing to contemplate.

The Lydster, Part 140: PTX

The Daughter uses The Wife’s iPad more than The Wife does. Among other things, she watches music videos. Sometimes, while riding the stationary bike, she listens to her second favorite group (after the Beatles, of course.)

That would be Pentatonix, an a cappella quintet: Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi, Kirstie Maldonado, Kevin Olusola, and Avi Kaplan. From the website:

Since bursting onto the scene in 2011, Grammy Award-winners and platinum selling recording artists, Pentatonix, has sold more than 2 million albums in the U.S. alone and amassed over 905 million views on their YouTube channel with more than 7.8 million subscribers. Their latest holiday album – That’s Christmas To Me – sold more than 1.1 million copies in the U. S., becoming one of only four acts to release a platinum album in 2014.

The Daughter came up with her Top 10 favorite songs.

10. White Winter Hymnal. OK, I don’t “get” the song from their 2014 Christmas album, originally recorded by Fleet Foxes on their 2008 debut album.

9. I Need Your Love. I like this more than the Calvin Harris feat. Ellie Goulding original.

8. Daft Punk. I find the blue eyes…distracting, and not in a good way. This is a medley of Daft Punk songs, including Get Lucky. In February 2015, the group received their first GRAMMY® Award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental and A Cappella for the medley.

7. Radioactive, featuring Lindsey Stirling. A cover of a 2012 Imagine Dragons song.

6. Rather Be. Originally done by Clean Bandit, featuring Jess Glynne. I’ll admit that I had never heard either version before.

5. Can’t Hold Us. I wonder if the Daughter’s seen the Macklemore & Ryan Lewis video featuring Ray Dalton from 2013.

4. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Now we’re into very familiar source material: Tchaikovsky. Let’s watch Nina Kaptsova dance to it.

3. Love Again. Is this an original? If not, I have no idea of the source material.

2. The Evolution Of Music. This is the first recording of theirs I heard, a medley of songs MOSTLY from the 20th and 21st century. I like how it changes from black & white to color in the 1960s. Here it is again, with the “thank you” tag. Here’s the list of songs covered.

My twin nieces and The Daughter performed this at the Olin family reunion in July. Let’s watch Minnie the Moocher by Cab Calloway.

1. Wizard Of Ahhhs, starring Todrick Hall. A Wizard of OZ motif, featuring a medley of these songs. I had no idea who Hall was – here’s his Evolution of Disney.

I need to listen to Somewhere Over The Rainbow, by Judy Garland and by Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole, plus the IZ medley of Rainbow and What a Wonderful World.

Thanks. Giving. (Refugees)

We make a mockery of the inscription of that beacon of hope, the Statue of Liberty.

There are three basic arguments against blocking Syrian refugees from entering the United States after the extensive screening already taking place:

1. It’s exactly what Daesh wants. That’s a rather persuasive argument against equating refugees with terrorists, for me. The identified Paris attackers were not refugees, and the Syrian passport conveniently found near one of the attack sites, was most likely a fake.

Daesh has been recruiting people that are already citizens in their target country. As my former TU blogging colleague Kevin Marshall notes: “Planting operatives among Syrian refugees that have to undergo vetting processes, scrutiny, and no resources for them once they reach their uncertain destination? Not only is that the opposite of their modus operandi, but it’s also a really dumb, convoluted plan with unnecessary obstacles. It’s like the Rube Goldberg Device of terrorist plots.”

Yet at least 30 governors say they want to close their states to Syrian refugees. Presidential candidates are talking about shutting down mosques (that would be D. Trump) and discriminating against refugees on the basis of religion. Members of Congress are threatening to cut off funding for refugee assistance while four million Syrian refugees are desperate to get away from a civil war not of their own making.

In other words, to quote the cliche from dozen years ago, “We’re letting the terrorists win.” Or as Robert Reich put it, channeling FDR, we’d be “fearing fear itself.” (Which FDR himself succumbed to with the Japanese internment, one of the most shameful acts in American history.)

2. It falls desperately short of the American ideal. To quote Andrew Cuomo, which I VERY seldom do: “We have to protect Americans and not lose our soul as America in the process.”

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
—Emma Lazarus, 1883

When we close our borders and stop letting in those that need our help to enter this country, we make a mockery of the inscription of that beacon of hope, the Statue of Liberty, and as Cuomo noted, “I say take down the Statue of Liberty because you’ve gone to a different place.”

And I get to agree with Senator John McCain (R-AZ) when he notes, about Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) suggestion to favor Christian refugees from Syria over Muslims, “I don’t think any child, whether they are Christian or whether they are atheist or whether they are Buddhist, that we should make a distinction,” McCain said. “My belief is that all children are God’s children.”

Plus, resettlement in the U.S. is a long process as it is. The Refugee Admissions Program is jointly administered by the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) in the Department of State, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and offices within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) within DHS conducts refugee interviews and determines individual eligibility for refugee status in the United States. John Oliver explains.

We should not respond with hysteria. Here are some things ordinary people can do to restore sanity.

3. It’s not the Christian thing to do:

Imagine a poor Middle Eastern couple, the woman very pregnant, with no place to stay. Recall how the child who would be born grows up to say, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.” Here are some other Bible verses about how to treat refugees. If we claim to be Christians and ignore this invocation, we might as well keep those creches in their storage boxes this Advent season.

When I posted the Resolution for Protection and Hospitality for Syrian Refugees from the Albany (NY) Presbytery on Facebook, I was told, “I think you’ve just glossed over just about everything that [a lengthy rationale from a third party] has said in favor of blind faith.” To which I replied, “I guess I’m just trying to literally respond to WWJD.” Check out Stephen Colbert’s response.

Or, in the words of The Thinking Atheist: “Why are we so quick to see the ugly…when we stand before the beautiful?”
***
Remember this Thanksgiving:
Hello

Thanksgiving explanations from Anglophenia

Choose to be grateful. It will make you happier.

T is for Trolls

Trolls never need proof of their claims. They get their power from readers’ outrage.

Trolls, in Scandinavian folklore, were entities that “live far from human habitation… and are considered dangerous to human beings… Trolls may be ugly and slow-witted…”

Whereas an Internet troll is “a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.” Very similar.

“This sense of the word troll and its associated verb trolling are associated with Internet discourse but have been used more widely. Media attention in recent years has equated trolling with online harassment. For example, mass media has used troll to describe ‘a person who defaces Internet tribute sites with the aim of causing grief to families.'”

I was thinking about this because some “person” suggested that shootings in Sandy Hook, CT in 2012 did not happen, and he would give anyone $25,000 if they could provide him with “proof.”

Naturally, this caused all sorts of anger. Someone wrote, “He’s the one making an extraordinary claim. It’s up to him to support his hypothesis with evidence.” But I think that’s wrong. Trolls never need proof of their claims. They get their power from readers’ outrage.

A few months ago, SamuraiFrog linked to this interesting article, 10 Former Internet Trolls Explain Why They Quit Being Jerks. One response, in particular, I found instructive:

1) I had two different personalities and demeanours, one online and one offline. I even ended up being obnoxious online to somebody I knew personally and he pointed it out to me. It was a wake up call.

2) I wasn’t making any friends or allies. Even when I was right about something or other people held the same opinions, I was getting fewer and fewer responses or agreements. I didn’t care about the numbers, but I realized I was making myself irrelevant and unwelcome in discussions and forums. And sometimes I was banned…

3) I saw the effects of trolls. The increasing number of news stories… about suicides, harassment, death threats, racism and other revolting behaviour got to be too much. I may not have been guilty of any of those types of assaults, but I recognized that I was part of the problem.

4) I was starting to become the target of trolls and abuse… I saw a news item about a man who left a white supremacist group and changed his tune when he realized the group’s list of “undesirables to be euthanized” included his own mentally disabled son. It wasn’t until the hate affected him personally that he realized he was on the wrong side. Same here.

When foolish people say inane things online, feel free to vent your anger. But know that you may just be feeding the beast.

ABC Wednesday – Round 17

Polina, Michael Butler and connection

But nothing is graphic. Everything is inferred.

Thursday, November 12, my long-time friend Karen, who lives in New York City, emails me that Michael Viktor Butler is premiering a play called Polina (poh-LEE-nah) the next evening and that she’s coming up to see it. In Albany. About three and a half blocks from my house, at the Madison Theatre, primarily, but not solely, a movie house.

Michael and I know each other very peripherally, but he, who was a friend of one of Karen’s older siblings, became a muse to Karen, as he ran the experimental television in Binghamton in the mid-1970s, before returning to NYC himself, and she’s kept in touch with him.

I had no idea about this production until I perused this description on the movie theater’s website:

In This sensational scorcher, adapted from Butler’s novella of the same name, will be presented in the tradition of 19th Century Grand Guignol theater, complete with live salon orchestra and spectacular special effects. The title role is played by Madame Irene McMahon. Butler assumes all other parts, spectacularly interpreted in Delstarte Technique.

Polina also featured puppet master Erica Johnson.

Then I read Amy Biancolli’s preview about it in the Times Union, where Michael explains that Polina, “literally… steps out of paintings to snack on the man-parts of virgins… But nothing is graphic. Everything is inferred…”

Walking to the Madison Friday, I just happened to see Karen disembark from her car. And we and a couple of her friends she knows from a local radio station sat together.

Briefly: Polina really is a dark comedy. The first act’s too long, and the second much too short, but it’s the first production, so one discovers these things. Also, there were a few technical glitches, but nothing major.

Something I did not remember is that Michael Butler was living in my area, presently about six blocks from my house. We became reacquainted, and I got to see Karen for the first time since my birthday in March.