Movie Reviews-Breaking Bad (Season 2), White Heat, Intruders

Breaking Bad (Season Two)
created by Vince Gilligan

What would it be like to be a criminal? Have you ever thought about it? What would it be like to live outside the law and have to deal with all the problems that decision would include? How would you change personally? Obviously criminals can't be nice guys, especially if they are working as drug dealers. How could you trust your partners? How you would you hide your ill gotten gains? How would you keep the IRS from sniffing around? Could you be a vicious mean SOB at "work" and still maintain a decent "home" personality? How would you keep your work associates from knowing where you lived or contacting you during off hours? What if one of your associates gets arrested and decides to rat? If you work with killers and other dangerous people do you have to become a killer and get a deadly crew of your own just to keep up with the Joneses? Is it a good idea to let vicious and totally immoral co-workers get the idea that that you're soft? How do you learn the rules of the criminal world? Can you learn how to bribe people and who to bribe? Is the money really worth all the extra bother?

In the second season of Breaking Bad, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) has to confront all these questions and more. He became a murderer in Season One though it was by accident, impulsive and arguably in self-defense. In Season Two White becomes a more calculating and less sympathetic character. He finds it less possible to hide behind the "Hey I just make the stuff, what people do after that is not my business" dodge and occasionally he doesn't want to. He's also, to his partner's annoyance, an arrogant SOB.

That said, changing morals or not, blooded or not Walter White at this point is still a lower middle class high school chemistry teacher who's cursed with terminal lung cancer. His experience with underworld ethics and rules is still quite limited. He's not by any means physically imposing or intimidating nor is he capable of shooting first and asking questions later like some of his associates.

One such associate would be the violent, depraved and scarily unpredictable Tuco (Raymond Cruz) who is the distributor for Walter's and Jesse's (Aaron Paul) trademark blue meth. Tuco is the living embodiment of chaos. He beat an underling to death for the sin of speaking out of line. Tuco did this in front of Walter and Jesse. Now Tuco's business is under assault from the local police and DEA. Worried and paranoid, Tuco kidnaps Walter and Jesse and prepares to flee to Mexico, that is if he doesn't decide to kill them first as witnesses or possible snitches or because his sickly but still malevolent uncle just doesn't like them.

Walter and Jesse manage to escape from this situation by some unexpected intervention from Walter's DEA brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris). Although this initially feels like something of a deus ex machina it has a cost that will reverberate throughout the season. for everyone. The strutting macho slightly bigoted Hank discovers that taking a life or seeing one taken has consequences, some of which he can't share with anyone. Rather than be caught at the scene Walter and Jesse flee separately and make up totally implausible stories to explain their sudden disappearances and reappearances. These stories put Jesse on Hank's radar screen and cause Walter's pregnant wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) to start to question her husband's sanity and then his truthfulness. How many lies would you let your significant other tell you? Is one enough to end a relationship? Does it matter what it was about?

The tension ratchets up as business and personal advances and setbacks see Walter and Jesse make and lose fortunes and engage in very volatile relationships with their loved ones. Walter finds that the harder edges of his business side poke through in his personal life whether he wants them to or not. In a strange way it's almost like watching a werewolf movie. Walter is changing. He can't help it or always control it and he often likes it. For his part Jesse is tired of always being considered the partnership's dumb second banana. He makes some bad business and personal decisions that will end in tragedy for many people. Season Two also introduced the enigmatic Gus (Giancarlo Esposito), who may have a business arrangement for Walter, and the oleaginous Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) a truly criminal lawyer who keeps a sharp eye out for his own interests. And there's still the cancer thing of course. The cancer treatment is running through Walter's money faster than he can earn it. 

This season went to some very dark places but the acting and writing shone through. Cranston and Gunn really bring it! It's a truism that if you hide things they just fester until they come out in other even more harmful ways. And Walter White has been hiding a lot over the years. He was at or near the top of his class in high school and college but somewhere something went awry. Walter intends to fix that and get his rightful place in the sun, by hook or by crook.
Trailer for Season Two   Scene from Season Two

White Heat
directed by Raoul Walsh

Warners Brothers was always known for its gangster movies and White Heat was a beauty. It was one of the last of the classic crime movies with the old school touch.
I could say just see it and leave it at that. I like film noir and this fits the bill. It's filmed in glorious black and white and features film legend James Cagney in one of his later, more mature gangster roles. Although White Heat was considered bloody and violent for the time it is perhaps surprising to see how much can be said or implied without explicit bloody violence or nudity.
Even if you've never seen this film you may be familiar with some of its dialogue, including the infamous line "Made it Ma! Top of the world!!!".

Cagney was a former vaudeville song and dance man and this film plays to that strength. Even at the age of 50, Cagney brought a tigerish grace and lithe athletic intensity to the role of Cody Jarrett, stick-up man, gangster, bank robber and all around thug. He's always moving, bouncing on his feet and acting aggressively. He dominates the film and I mean that in a very good way. This film set the stage for later filmic killers like O-Dog in Menace II Society. The language is not as foul but it's the same guy separated by time, race and setting. The lead character is a psychotic killer who may be epileptic. He's cruel and capricious but he is occasionally quite funny. Everyone has the trademark quick, fast paced snappy dialogue that was common in many films of this time. I really like this dialogue. Too bad we don't speak like that any more.This picture was inspired in part by real life gunsels such as Ma and Doc Barker as well as Two Gun Crowley. 

Cody Jarrett is the leader of a small time bunch of hoodlums. He doesn't really trust or like any of them, especially his number two guy Big Ed (Steve Cochran). As Cody says, "Ya know somethin', Verna? If I turned my back long enough for Big Ed to put a hole in it - there'd be a hole in it. Big Ed. Great Big Ed. You know why they call him that? 'Cause his ideas are big. Some day, he's gonna get a really big one - about me - it'll be his last."  Cody has a strange almost Freudian relationship with his Ma (Margaret Wycherly) a cold gangster in her own right who watches over Cody's interests when he's not around. She's one of the few people that Cody trusts absolutely. She also physically comforts him when he suffers from horrible headaches/manic moods. Cody also has to act as referee between his mother and his beautiful but vain and vindictive wife, Verna (Virginia Mayo). The two women do not get along, perhaps because they are so similar. Verna might be jealous of Cody's relationship with his mother. Verna is also wondering if Cody still has the stuff to lead and if she might not be better advised to jump ship to another up and comer.

When Cody commits a train robbery he admits to a lesser charge. He's sent to prison with a shorter sentence where the authorities plant an undercover agent "Pardo" (Edmund O'Brien) in his cell to try to get Cody to confess to other crimes and/or find out who his fence is. But it's while Cody is locked up that Big Ed finally starts to make his move. And some of these moves involves Cody's family. Locked up or not you don't do that to Cody.

Ma: Any time I can't handle his kind, I'll know I'm gettin' old. No one does what he's done to you, son, and gets away with it.

Cody: No, no, Ma, look, listen to me, you won't have a chance...

Ma: I'm goin' after him, Cody, to keep him from having you knocked off in here.

And that's when the movie moves into a higher gear, one replete with double crosses, fake outs, more lies and one of the best shootouts then filmed. Cagney carries the film and I had a lot of fun watching it.
TRAILER

Intruders
directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Although this is a modern film it is a bit of a throwback to sixties movies in that there is not any blood and gore, only a small amount of nudity (provided by Game of Thrones star Carice Van Houten aka "Melisandre") and not much in the way of hyperactive camera work. This film takes its sweet time to provide old school fears, mostly by the simple technique of not showing everything. In fact it doesn't show much. So if you're looking for guts, gore and lots of toplessness this probably isn't the film for you. This is by the same director who did 28 Days Later, which had completely different camera work and storytelling style.

Intruders tells two stories of children on the verge of puberty, one Spanish boy Juan (Izan Corchero) and one British girl Mia (Ella Purnell) who are being terrorized when they sleep by the seeming boogeyman come to life, who they name Hollowface. Hollowface apparently doesn't have a face of his own (hence the name) and wants to steal the children's faces. Both children are thus afraid to go to sleep and need extra attention from their worried parents, as well as either priests or psychological specialist as culture dictates.

Mia's father is John Farrow (Clive Owen) and her mother is Susanna Farrow (Carice Van Houten). Mia is their only child and John, a construction worker, dotes on her. So when she finds an old story about Hollowface in a tree trunk he's worried. And when she starts to see or hear Hollowface he's more than concerned. Meanwhile Juan is almost kidnapped by Hollowface but is saved at the last minute by his mother, Luisa (Pillar Lopez). Later, Luisa tries to get a priest to perform an exorcism. Susanna thinks Mia is hysterical while John tries to calm her with a staged burning of a Hollowface effigy.

The burning doesn't work as Mia's convinced that Hollowface is inside the home, hiding in the closet. Her parents don't believe her until one night when John hears a noise and screams from his daughter's room and runs in to confront Hollowface. He fights the thing but for some reason the entity is not captured on the video camera John has installed. So the question starts to become is this supernatural or psychological? And why can't you find a good exorcist when you need one? This is a creepy little film but I'm not quite sure the payoff works. Still I liked it because it was a change of pace in thriller/horror films. Again, this is really NOT a film with a lot of violence, sex or bad language. It's the slow building sense of fear that this movie tries to stoke and employ. If you are a patient film viewer this could be for you.  TRAILER

Yeah About That Dream Act...

Do you remember all the rhetoric over the Dream Act?
When the President decided to implement via executive decision what he couldn't get passed by Congress there were a lot of stories about how unfair it was that someone who was brought illegally to the United States as a child and had graduated high school or college faced the possibility of deportation and couldn't find work legally. Tears of compassion were shed and calls for change went up throughout the land. It was estimated in think tank studies, media reports and official/unofficial government statements that roughly about 800,000 illegal immigrants would be eligible under the Dream Act. Congress refused to change the law. President Obama, it being an election year, suddenly decided that he had powers that he had previously denied having and ordered the relevant agencies to cease and desist deportations of people that would have fallen under the Dream Act, had it been passed which it wasn't. Now this is a rather unique sort of approach to the law. Order people to act according to a law which doesn't exist. Fascinating.

Anyway yesterday was the first day that illegal immigrants were eligible to apply for work permits and deferred action status under this new "law" which was not passed by Congress and doesn't exist. Of course now that they have what they want the details of the new policy turn out not quite to be what either the President or the advocates for illegal residence in the United States had told everyone they were. Instead of 800,000 people being eligible, the new estimate is 1.7 million!!. That's right, over twice the initial widely reported number. And it's not going to be only high school or college graduates who are all going to build the next Facebook or Microsoft, that is if they didn't have to worry about those pesky ICE agents. Nah. The new policy includes not only the people with degrees or who graduated high school but those people who are working towards a GED, people that aren't working towards a GED but will be at some time in the future or people who aren't even in high school yet but may be eligible for this deferred action status at some distant yet to be determined time.


 In short dropouts, middle school kids, heck just about EVERYBODY will be eligible. It's a rolling amnesty. If you are an illegal immigrant and don't fit the deferred action criteria, don't sweat it. Just wait until you do. After all the Administration has already announced that short of committing a felony, they aren't going to even pretend to try to deport you. ICE has more important things to do than deport illegal immigrants, like allegedly running a female frat house and sexually harassing male workers.

The MPI estimates are up from the 1.39 million figure provided on June 15 —reflecting the updated DHS guidelines that youth lacking a high school or GED degree would be eligible to apply for deferred action as long as they have re-enrolled by the date of their application.
While USCIS will only accept applications for the DACA initiative from applicants 15 and older, the deferred action policy also will apply to qualified unauthorized immigrants —regardless of whether they are older or younger than 15 — who are already in removal proceedings or might be in the custody of immigration officials in the future

LINK

As you may remember I opposed the Dream Act and I oppose this deferred action policy, which is the Dream Act in all but name. Why? Because this is MY country. It's not a country for illegal immigrants. If you want to be an American, either be born here or get permission from the people living here. Now this is usually where someone talks about the Native Americans and thinks that ends the conversation. It really shows how important it is to maintain a strict immigration policy. Show me a country existing today that has the exact same ethnic mix and form of government that it did 500 years ago. Those are rare. Things change. What was done to the Native Americans was wrong. It can't be undone. That has absolutely nothing to do with immigration policy in the 21st century. Maybe you want to argue that America has no right to exist and should be dismantled. I don't see things that way. Other countries, including some that are exporting millions of illegal immigrants into the US have the same history of European conquest, displacement, rape, enslavement and settlement that the US has. The Mexicans weren't exactly best friends with the Comanche or Apache.  No country is quiet about millions of foreigners moving in without permission. Just about every group of people on the planet at some level have a "this is mine" relationship to the patch of earth they call home. Most of us are no longer nomadic hunter gatherers or herdsmen.

I see the country as my house. I have a nice house. There are millions of homes that are much nicer and larger and millions that are not as nice but this one is mine. The only people that are allowed in my house are people that I want there. And if I decide that I don't want them there any longer, they have to leave. My basement is larger than some people's homes, as I am sure some people's basements are larger than my entire home. Does that give someone a little less fortunate the right to enter and stay in my basement, on the grounds that it looks to them like I'm not using it anyway? Even if they cleaned things up and lived quietly I wouldn't like it. And if they catch an attitude about how I run my house and agitate to invite more of their friends in I would like it even less. 

Is it fair that I have a nicer house than some people? Is it fair that every day I see the same bum on the expressway exit begging for a handout? Do I owe that person anything? Do I owe him my house? Nope. I don't owe him anything.

Similarly it is unfortunate that Mexico and large portions of Central America are apparently relatively unpleasant places to live and that so many residents there would evidently prefer to live somewhere nicer. But that doesn't give them any right to move to the US without permission and stay. And I feel the same way about people outside of the US regardless of where they came from. If you come here legally then I will call you an American and welcome you as a countryman. Otherwise, please go home. Race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion or any other characteristic is immaterial to me in this matter. I understand why someone would want to move to the US. I sympathize. But I also would like a new 2013 Bentley. It doesn't mean anyone owes me one.

As we have discussed before no one begrudges the executive branch the right to gently stretch the law or use discretion in what cases it takes up. Although I am rarely fortunate enough to get off with just a warning I understand that police do not stop every speeder nor do they issue tickets to everyone they stop. A kid caught shoplifting may get a scary lecture in the back office instead of a juvenile record. A man who beats up his jerk brother-in-law for hurting his sister might get a wink and a nod from the prosecutor and lowered charges. I get all that. That doesn't bother me.

That's not what is happening here.

If a local police chief were to suddenly announce that going forward his department would no longer enforce speed laws that's a problem. Or to put it in even more relevant terms should Mitt Romney become President he will want to lower taxes. He probably won't get that through the Senate. Let's say that a frustrated President Romney announced that since Congress wouldn't act he had to. If a President Romney were to direct the IRS and Treasury not to investigate or prosecute anyone who refused to pay capital gains or estate taxes, would you think that a good idea? Or would you rage at an arrogant princeps taking the law into his own hands?

There is a difference between discretion and dismissal. And this executive Dream Act crosses that line.  ICE Agents face suspension for arresting illegal immigrants-even though that is the law of the land. As you might expect the ICE union is not very happy about this. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, fresh from her general loss in the Supreme Court announced that Arizona would not be issuing driver's licenses to anyone allowed in under the new policy. For now at least states still have the right to do that. For now... 

What's your take?

Is this something that is long overdue and compassionate?

If you like the country as it is are you a bad person?

Do you think the economy will be better off with millions more workers?

What is the solution to the problem of illegal immigration?

Vice-President Biden, Chains, Wall Street and Black People

If I stood in front of an audience which had a sizable proportion of Jewish Americans and claimed (even tongue in cheek) that my political opponent would have them "back in death camps" some people might consider that a desperate attempt for votes and something of a slanderous low blow. I might even get a verbal brush back from the ADL or AIPAC chiding me for lightly using such metaphors. But Vice-President Joe Biden is not a person who is worried about such things. In Danville, VA , a city that is roughly half black and happens to have been the final capital of the Confederacy, and in front of an audience which NBC News stated was representative of the city, Vice-President Biden spoke dismissively of Republican plans to change Wall Street regulation.

Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a Republican-led effort to loosen new regulations on Wall Street would put voters "back in chains." "Romney wants to, he said in the first 100 days, he's gonna let the big banks again write their own rules," Biden said of the GOP nominee's proposals to roll back the Obama administration's financial reforms. "'Unchain Wall Street!'" Lowering his voice, Biden added, "They're going to put you all back in chains."

LINK

Now of course the Administration in the person of one Stephanie Cutter, Obama deputy campaign manager, strongly defended Vice-President Biden's statements. 

We have no problem with those comments," said Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports."
Pressed on whether President Obama himself agrees with those comments, Cutter said the full context of the remarks was important.
"[Obama] probably agrees with Joe Biden's sentiments," Cutter said. "He's using a metaphor to talk about what's going to happen."

Ok. Fair enough. I think it's a bit odd to be using language that could be interpreted as fear mongering of a return to SLAVERY because of different ideas about Wall Street regulation but there you are. Perhaps leaving Wall Street to its own devices, free from regulation or the long arm of the criminal law really is akin to putting Americans -especially Black Americans - back in chains. So maybe I should thank Vice-President Joe Biden for having the courage and the commitment to stand up and say negative things about his political rivals, the Republicans. I mean it must take a lot of moxie to talk bad about your rivals. Not everyone has the guts to criticize people on the other side politically. As Biden implied, maybe those evil Republicans really do want to protect big banks and their executives from justice and not put those dastardly devils, those rascally reprobates, those piggish parasites into prison where they so richly deserve to be.

There's just one problem with Biden's self-serving narrative of the Administration being the one that wants to go after Wall Street while the Republicans want to coddle and protect Wall Street.

It's not true.

In news which was ignored by too many people the Justice Department recently announced that it would not be prosecuting Goldman Sachs or any of its employees for financial wrongdoing arising out of the 2008 financial crisis. This would be the same Goldman Sachs that was selling crappy bundled mortgage backed securities to clients and telling them they were A+ rated while describing them as crap in internal documents. This would be the same Goldman Sachs that journalist Matt Taibbi famously described as a vampire squid. for its centrality to the financial rot at the heart of American finance. And this would be the same Justice Department that is headed by Eric Holder, whose former law firm has Goldman Sachs as a client and whose boss, the President, received over $1 million in campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs in 2008 alone. The relative lack of engagement in going after systematic misdeeds by financial institutions has been noticed.

The problem isn't a shortage of scandalous stories. We've seen a lot of those. What we haven't seen, at least here in the United States, is a single indictment of a senior Wall Street banker from the United States Department of Justice. And that's what has these political insiders concerned.

Questions raised

A growing number of people are privately expressing concern at the Justice Department's long-standing pattern of inactivity, obfuscation and obstruction. Mr. Holder's past as a highly-paid lawyer for a top Wall Street firm, Covington and Burling, is being discussed more openly among insiders. Covington & Burling was the law firm which devised the MERS shell corporation that has since been implicated in many cases of mortgage and foreclosure fraud. Wells Fargo has already been implicated in the laundering of money for the Mexican drug cartels that have murdered as many as sixty thousand people, as well as having been found to have engaged in some of the most egregious borrower fraud. Now, as attorney Field notes, it's even illegally closing the bank accounts of unfriendly bloggers to extract revenge.

Despite its massive rap sheet, which includes investor fraud and the bribing of Alabama officials, and despite the SEC investigation of its "London whale" debacle, JPMorgan Chase is is defying a subpoena in California and refusing to turn its emails over to a judge. It's charged with the same kind of criminal activity that was behind the Enron scandal: manipulating energy markets. And despite Jamie Dimon's suggestion that the head of the "London whale's" group would be forced to return her ill-gotten millions, she was allowed to resign and keep the money. There's no sign that a criminal investigation of this affair is underway, despite Dimon's own admission that laws may have been broken.

LINK

In short, Biden is in a very flimsy glass house when it comes to throwing stones about who's gonna be tough on Wall Street. Very flimsy indeed. So if Biden wants to make the argument that Romney and Ryan are going to put Americans "back in chains" based on their love of Wall Street I would ask Biden when did he or Obama ever take the chains off? Is Biden really going to argue that I should vote for him because the Republicans won't prosecute Wall Street either? O-kay.

The problem as I see it is that the political establishment and the financial establishment are far too closely intertwined. When you can throw millions at a candidate, they're going to listen to what you say and return your phone calls. And when there is a revolving door between government and business, there should be no surprise that some of the people in government who are supposed to be regulating or even prosecuting business, occasionally need reminders of what their job description really is.

The Republicans, who have spent the past four years calling President Obama everything but a child of God, certainly do not have any room for sanctimonious outrage over Biden's remarks. But just because their hands are dirty doesn't mean that Biden's (and Obama's) hands are clean. There's some other analysis I want to get into about fear mongering, black people, progressives and the fall election but that will have to wait for a later post. Suffice it to say for now that no I don't believe that the world as we know it will come to an end if the "wrong" man should win.

What's your take?

Were Biden's comments appropriate?

Are the Republicans misconstruing them? Is this minor league nonsense?

Is there any difference between the two parties and their devotion to capital?

Book Reviews-The King of Elfland's Daughter, Fearless Jones

The King of Elfland's Daughter
By Lord Dunsany

Lord Dunsany (1878-1957) was a true Renaissance Man (poet, author, playwright, chess champion, nobleman, pistol shooting champion, veteran of three wars, big game hunter, professor, animal rights activist) who had a profound influence on such writers as disparate as J.R.R. Tolkien, Neil Gaiman,(check out Stardust) Michael Moorcock, Evangeline Walton, David Eddings, H.P. Lovecraft, and even Robert E. Howard.

Sadly I had never read Lord Dunsany before and since I have roughly 300(!!) or so books waiting to be read I decided to finally start reading his work and see if it held up to the wonderful things that other writers had said about the author. It did. Man, did it ever. Dunsany possessed a lyrical fluid verbosity with prose which put you in mind of Shakespeare in some ways. It's not enough to say that H.P. Lovecraft bit off of Dunsany. In some places he devoured him whole. Although The King of Elfland's Daughter (TKED) is a short book, it is incredibly dense and will leave you wanting more.

To just digress for a moment in J.R.R Tolkien's legendarium elves and humans do not normally intermarry and when they do there's often tragedy. Elves are virtually immortal and ageless while humans of course deteriorate rapidly from an elvish POV and die like mayflies. The two peoples experience Time differently and have slightly different relationships to their Creator. Humans are jealous of elves' immortality and fearful (thanks to the Enemy's lies) of the Gift of Death. Elves do not understand human haste and restlessness and seeming need of change for change's sake. Humans who seek after elvish immortality are dabbling in things they do not understand and generally come to very bad ends indeed. Tolkien just paints this in very broad strokes though and moves on to other things in most of the works published in his lifetime. 

In TKED Dunsany dove a little deeper and actually made a pretty compelling tale of the problems that a mixed marriage might bring. In Elfland Time does not exist or moves at such a slow state that it is virtually nullified. There is no rush to do anything. Moments of bliss can literally last for eternity. Of course while Time stands still in Elfland it rushes in the mortal world. A human who spends what he thinks of as a short time in Elfland may return to the mortal word and find that a decade or more has passed. Similarly an elf or other denizen of Elfland may come to our world and be excited and more than a little frightened by the constant change of seasons, people aging, sunsets and moonrises and all of the other things which humans take for granted. An elf has no religion and sees no reason why she shouldn't worship the stars. In TKED you get an idea of how far love would have to stretch when a human would have to find the words to explain to an elf that laughing and singing at funerals or talking to goats is not considered proper.

This mixed marriage and several other events are set into motion when the Parliament of Erl decides that their home area needs to be better known. To this end they tell their aged lord that nothing personal but they would prefer to be ruled by a magic lord. The noble thinks this a silly idea but is bound to follow the rule of Parliament in most things. He sends his son Alveric on a quest to bring back the King of Elfland's daughter, marry her and then produce an heir who will have magic. Alveric is a dutiful son and proceeds to follow his father's instructions to the letter. It's what happens after his initial quest, which is completed within the first few chapters, that makes this book unusual and well worth the read. Again, Lord Dunsany had a beautiful way with prose. The images he created are vivid and almost leap off the page. His wording is odd but strangely compelling. It's like the writers of the King James Bible turned their skills to even more fantastical stories. Here's an example:

She wore a crown that seemed to be carved of great pale sapphires; she shone on those lawns and gardens like a dawn coming unaware, out of long night, on some planet nearer to us than the sun...And Alveric gazed in her eyes all speechless and powerless still; it was indeed the Princess Lirazel in her beauty.

Know then that in Elfland are colours more deep than are in our fields, and the very air there glows with so deep a lucency that all things seen there have something of the look of our trees and flowers in June reflected in water.

TKED is a great little novel (almost short enough to be a short story) about the perils of inviting magic in your life, the glory and madness of true love, and how sometimes you should be careful what you ask for. Good stuff. But for the last time what makes this story stand out is not the plot or the characters but the language. It's a fairy tale in the best sense of the term.

Fearless Jones
by Walter Mosley

Fearless Jones was Walter Mosley's return to noir crime fiction set in post war LA. It is quite similar to his Easy Rawlins work so if you like those stories I think you will enjoy Fearless Jones. It even takes place in the same universe and the legendary Mouse is name checked. Like the Easy Rawlins stories, Mosley has split the hero into two characters. There is the quiet more analytical man, who's not quite cowardly but certainly doesn't go looking for trouble or violence and prefers to think or negotiate his way out of a tough jam. Then there's the more brash fellow who's not stupid but would rather be acting than thinking when it comes down to it, won't back down from anyone, and is no stranger to severe acts of violence. 

In this book the first sort of man is Paris Minton. Minton is a relatively short man who doesn't have a lot of luck with ladies and generally keeps a low profile as much as he can. He's a go along to get along type of fellow. He runs a used bookstore, one which he maintains despite routine harassment from racist cops. He doesn't make a lot of money from his business but it's enough to pay his rent and allow him to do what he likes to do best all day, which is read and not bother or be bothered by people.

One day Minton is minding his own business when a beautiful woman runs into his store and asks him if a Reverend Grove is there. Once Minton stops drooling over her looks he explains that Grove had a church down the street but moved out a short while before. She's in despair and runs into Minton's back room. A thug comes in asking for the woman and then beats Minton like a rented mule. Once he's awake Minton runs into the woman again. Her name is Elana Love. She tells him a rather fantastic story, makes love to him, and then steals his car. Confused Minton goes back to his shop only to find out that someone burned it down. And suddenly people are shooting at him. 

Minton decides that it's time to spring his buddy from the clink, one Fearless Jones, so nicknamed because he really doesn't give a bleep who you are, if you hurt him or his there's gonna be hell to pay. Jones is a WW2 vet. And only Minton knows how far Jones is willing to go to help his friends. And Minton needs help. This all happens in the first 20-30 pages. It's a breakneck speed read that kicks off an initially confusing but ultimately rewarding tale of revenge, international intrigue, organized crime, and black life in mid 20th century Los Angeles. Mosley had a Jewish mother and his depiction of Jewish home life and food are quite entertaining and interesting. Jones tells the over cautious Minton that although Minton is not what Jones would describe as full-bad ,that description being reserved for Jones himself and two or three other men, including the dreaded Mouse, Minton is nonetheless a hero because he tries to do the right thing despite his fears whereas Jones simply isn't afraid of anything on God's green earth.

This was a good read but quite complex. You might have to occasionally go back a few chapters and see who a seemingly small character really was. I liked that though. It will stretch your reading comprehension in a good way.

Wisconsin Sikh Shooting, Gun Control, Wade Michael Page and Profiling

When the shooting in Aurora occurred a lot of people (especially NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg) ran to the nearest microphone or blog and spoke or wrote with heartfelt indignation of their beliefs that no one needed an "assault rifle" and such things were only good for killing mass numbers of people, only the military or police should have "assault rifles" or large capacity magazines, and that those people who supported the right to own "assault rifles" had blood on their hands and so forth and so on.

These people gingerly ignored the fact that the overwhelming majority of homicides carried out with guns are done with handguns, not rifles of any kind. These people also neglected to notice the inconvenient detail that the Founders did not want an unarmed populace and an armed to the teeth military and police.

Now we just had the neo-nazi nut in Wisconsin who appears to have used a legally acquired handgun with normal capacity magazines to kill six people and wound four. The man was being monitored by certain private groups that keep an eye on noticeable hateful individuals mostly of the right-wing variety.  There is of course a legitimate question, given how the right reacts to mass murders carried out by non-whites, if whiteness as a concept needs to have the same criticism directed at it as other nationalist or racially based identities. As the United States continues to change demographically will there be other such incidents? I don't think so but you never know...


There are conflicting reports as to whether or not the FBI or other government agencies were aware of Page and his views. The slaughter caused an increase in tension with the Indian government and Indian citizens who burned US flags and said that the US needed to do more to protect Sikhs.

The Indian government rushed its consul general from Chicago, N.J. Gangte, to Wisconsin. India’s foreign minister, S.M. Krishna, said the government was awaiting the results of the U.S. investigation and he criticized the gun culture in the United States.

‘‘The U.S. government will have to take a comprehensive look at this kind of tendency which certainly is not going to bring credit to the United States of America,’’ he said.

I'm not so sure that a country which regularly persecutes Muslims and Christians and has frequent mass outbursts of horrific violence directed at those groups has any room to lecture the United States about "culture" but whatever. India's murder rate is comparable to that of the United States and the actual number of people killed is about three times higher than in the United States. And for the most part missionaries in the US don't have to worry about being burned alive by people of different religions. People in the United States don't often become so livid that a Jehovah's Witness knocked on their door, that they gather a whole bunch of friends and start pogroms against Jehovah's Witnesses. But you know how it is, everybody thinks their own stuff doesn't stink. As a NYT column cogently pointed out we simply do not live in a society that allows punishment or incarceration for bad thoughts. With only a few exceptions, you can't incarcerate people for what they might do. Page had the freedom to be a Nazi and a white supremacist. He had the freedom to think that non-whites were inferior. He even had the freedom to call for unspecified action. It's only when you either take action or make a specific threat or plan of action that the authorities can legally intervene. There are of course many sting operations that the government carries out against groups it considers to be fringe or dangerous but one man's legally justified sting operation is another man's example of an out of control Leviathan government determined to criminalize political dissent and crush opposition by fair means or foul. And even in the sting operation you usually have to DO something illegal. As the NYT column points out, there are a lot of things to take into account when we start to consider ways to prevent crime. These aren't easy questions to address. No, not by any means.

The perfect prevention of crime asks us to consider exactly how far individual freedom extends. Does freedom include a “right” to drive drunk, for instance? It is hard to imagine that it does. But what if the government were to add a drug to the water supply that suppressed antisocial urges and thereby reduced the murder rate? This would seem like an obvious violation of our freedom. We need a clear method of distinguishing such cases.

One way is to keep in mind the distinction between thoughts and actions. A traditional rule in criminal law holds that there can be no crime unless the defendant committed some act: mere thoughts, no matter how horrific, are not sufficient. Thoughts cannot be regulated; everyone has a right to think what they wish without government intrusion.

As far as the gun, again it is important to point out that the gun was purchased legally. It is not illegal to be a tattooed Nazi and own guns. You can purchase hate literature and associate, date, marry or reproduce with someone who feels the same way that you do. You can teach your children racial hatred. You can spread racial hatred through your books, audio tapes, websites, speeches, music and radio or television shows. You can unabashedly call for expulsion and/or genocide of people who don't look like you.

That is what freedom means. It's not just about the Second Amendment. It's about the entire Bill of Rights, which taken in whole, effectively indicates that you have the right to think what you want, say what you want and must be left alone by government except under very particular circumstances. If you're comfortable with the idea of getting rid of the right to bear arms are you also comfortable with the idea of government prior restraint on "bad" ideas? Or is that an assault on your freedom? I may not think anyone "needs" to listen to hate music. Do you want me deciding what hate music is? What test to purchase a gun could you devise that Page would fail and that other people would pass? Ironically this racist garbage was a Stevie Ray Vaughn fan.  Stevie Ray Vaughn was a white man who openly admitted his love for black music, performed with black musicians and who created music that spoke of peace, love and brotherhood. How does a hate rock performer idolize such a man? Again, is there necessarily any music association test we could create that would be able to predict Page's actions?

The "cost" of this freedom, bluntly, is that some people will use it for evil. There is no way to prevent this without tearing up the entire Constitution and starting anew with a radically different understanding of the proper relationship between the state and the individual. Maybe we should do that. I don't think we should. Even a much more interventionist and restrictive government can not prevent people from doing ill. So you may not like to hear that but unless you want to live in a A Clockwork Orange type of society, in a very real way evil is the price of freedom. I'm willing to pay that price. We can't un-bite the apple. Our eldil is bent and that is that.

What's your take?

Was there any way this massacre could have been prevented?

Should hate speech be outlawed? Should the First Amendment be repealed?

Should preventive detention be widely used?

Should the federal government infiltrate and destroy fringe groups?

Should handguns be banned?

Music Reviews-BB King, Tramaine Hawkins

BB King-King of the Blues

Known as the "King of the Blues", Riley "BB" King is the best known, most influential and last living member of the three great Kings of the Blues (Freddie and Albert King being the other two) and is likely even today the single most recognized bluesman of all time. There are many reasons for this. The primary reason is that it is almost but not quite impossible for any guitarist born after BB King and playing guitar in an electric blues, rock, rock-n-roll, or blues rock context not to count him as a primary, secondary or tertiary influence. Lots of things that are electric guitar cliches now weren't cliches when King invented them in his twenties and thirties. The secondary reason is that for multiple decades King has maintained a gruesome and grueling 250-300 night or more tour schedule, one that only in recent years has begun to make allowances for his advanced age and health issues. He was paying the cost to be the boss indeed. There are very few musicians on the planet who are instantly identifiable after you've heard them sing or play just one note. It's a short list and BB King is at the top.


BB King's music is blues but it is blues that successfully synthesizes a number of different influences, especially uptown jazz and down home gospel. King's primary influences on guitar included such jazz guitarists as Lonnie Johnson, Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian, blues guitarists like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Elmore James, jazz horn players like Louis Jordan, Lester Young, and people who like King, walked a fine line between jazz and blues. I am speaking of such people as Lowell Fulson, and of course the incomparable T-Bone Walker, who as much as anyone is BB's most direct influence on guitar. King took Walker's sound, studied it, absorbed it and created his own.

You can't talk about King without talking about his masterful left hand vibrato which he says came about from trying (and failing) to play slide like his cousin Bukka White. Since, in his words, he had "stupid fingers", he had to do something different. And I think he succeeded in doing that. BB King, along with people like T-Bone, Otis Rush, Albert King, Buddy Guy, Ike Turner, Freddie King and a few others was responsible for helping to transition much post WW2 electric blues and rock from a band driven context to one in which the soloist got much more emphasis. He was truly one of the first guitar heroes. Like some of his contemporaries (Miles Davis) but unlike other musicians that came afterwards (Buddy Guy, Coltrane or Hendrix) King usually took a "less is more" approach. His leads and solos are smooth and do not try to show off every musical phrase he knows in a short time frame. There is often a lot of space in his arrangements and his solos.

Vocally he has a style that walks a line between a Baptist preacher and a smooth crooner. You can hear traces of James Cleveland, Ray Charles, Charles Brown, Louis Jordan, Billy Eckstine, Frank Sinatra, Eddie Jefferson, Joe Williams, Joe Turner and Johnny Hartmann in BB King's singing. He even occasionally employed a fine falsetto to great effect. BB King was born in 1925 and so his voice has finally roughened and cracked with age. But in earlier days he was just as much known for his singing as for his guitar playing. In fact he has always viewed his guitar playing as an extension of his singing, which is one reason that he rarely plays and sings at the same time. Typically modest, he says he just can't do it. He also is not one for playing a lot of accompaniment, feeling that's what his band is for. I've heard him occasionally lay down pretty chordal work but he's correct in thinking that's not what people come to hear him for. But all the same he'll surprise you from time to time. Where Albert King's tone is slow, ominous and menacing, BB King's tone is fluid, sassy and biting. It's a testament to both men's skills and creativity that although they were both influenced heavily by T-Bone Walker, they always sounded so incredibly and immensely different. BB King has usually preferred Gibson ES-355 guitars. His guitars are always named Lucille, after the name of a woman who inspired a bar brawl in Twist, Arkansas where King happened to be playing one night. During the fight the kerosene heater tipped over and everyone ran for the exits, including BB King. But deciding that his sole guitar was worth the risk, King ran back into the burning building to save his guitar. Upon exiting with his cherished axe, King inquired after the name of the woman and thereafter always named his guitars after her to remind himself not to do something so stupid ever again.

Somewhat ironically and quite ignorantly King's music was often initially considered "not real blues" by some English blues snobs (and some white Americans too) who had no social context by which to judge King's fondness for extended humorous preacherly monologues on domestic relationships, jazzy big band sounds, gospel inflected vocals, music that could be danced to, or vamps that sounded to their ears like R&B. King wasn't just playing sad music. He had a facility for a variety of more sophisticated jazzy scales (major pentatonic) and rhythms that didn't necessarily fit the stereotype of a drunk illiterate playing simple music on a back porch somewhere. It wasn't until the late sixties that King started to cross over to white audiences, as black audiences transitioned to soul and funk. But King has always maintained a dedicated black audience as well. King has consistently fought against the stereotype of the dumb bluesman and has resisted both white and black characterization of the blues as backwoods type music. King was always sharp, both musically and sartorially, and dedicated to business. Being from Mississippi he always had some resentments for people who assumed he didn't know things and has lived a life of constant self-improvement. For example not a lot of people know that he is a licensed pilot.

King has been playing professionally since the late forties and like anyone with that sort of history has gone through a lot of different phases. There's the early pre-rock-n-roll sound, the jump-blues sound, a mid fifties uptempo blues sound, a hardcore Memphis blues sound, an early sixties soul-blues/afro-cuban sound, an seventies sound that nodded to funk and rock, some crooner albums, some jazz albums, some country tinged albums and even a few pop albums. Whatever your favorite style of music might be, there's a good chance that BB King has played it at one point or the other during his long career. There are still giants that walk this earth and BB King is such a man. If you've heard him then you know what I'm talking about. If not then please check out some of the tunes listed below. There are tons of albums, remastered cd releases, cut-outs, but for my money his best albums are Live at Ole Miss, Live and Well, Completely Well, My Kind of Blues, To Know you is to Love you, Live at the Regal and Live at San Quentin. And it's hard to go wrong with any single released before 1975 or so. 
The Thrill Is Gone(Live at Ole Miss) Chains and Things  No Good  Boogie Woogie Woman
Hummingbird  Paying the Cost to Be the Boss  The Thrill is Gone   Night Life
To Know You is to Love You (with Stevie Wonder)  Ain't Nobody Home  Sweet Sixteen
Don't Answer the Door  Why I Sing the Blues (Live)  3 o'clock in the morning(with Bobby Bland)
Sweet Little Angel (with Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck)  Ghetto Woman
When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer Woke Up this Morning

Tramaine Hawkins
Tramaine Hawkins is one of the greatest modern gospel singers. She first came to stardom as featured soloist on choir recordings done by her brother-in-law Edwin Hawkins and husband Walter Hawkins. She later went solo with some pop-gospel recordings in the late seventies. It's a funny thing about the attitudes that many gospel fans and musicians have around the music. There's often resistance to anyone who succeeds outside of a strictly religious based format even though much of African-American popular music has gospel roots.

The Hawkins Singers, despite being a religious group, did some secular music, collaborated with various non-gospel musicians and even when they played or sang gospel music did so in a way that made it very obvious that they shared DNA with then current soul and funk music. It's a fine line to walk and one which has a lot of hypocrites on both sides. What makes a song religious or secular can often just be a slight twist of lyric. There's not really THAT much difference between a person singing "Can't nobody do me like Jesus" on Sunday morning and that same person singing "My baby can make a dead man jump and shout" on Saturday night. Many times gospel performers themselves have felt compelled to point out their differences with secular music even though in some cases (i.e. some of Tramaine Hawkins' work) these differences were relatively minor.

Anyway I love Hawkins' voice and most of her recorded output-particularly her work with the Hawkins Singers and her early solo work. I can do without her more dance oriented/disco work ,(i.e. "Fall Down") but everyone has their own tastes. Her music always takes me back to a more optimistic time.
Holy One Goin up Yonder Changed Precious Memories Give me a Star
Highway Will You Be There Someday  Fall Down

Romney in Israel: Palestinian Culture, Occupation, Racism and Providence

*This was going to be a much longer post and one with a slightly different emphasis but as often happens work and other events intervened and required me to abbreviate it greatly. Hopefully that will be a good thing as I am always seeking to write more concisely anyway.

So boring apologia aside you may have heard that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a bit of a gaffe recently when he made remarks that could be construed as insulting  by comparing the Israeli culture to that of the Palestinians and suggesting that not only was the Israeli culture superior but also that the Israelis were blessed by God and that these two things explained the difference in economic success between the two peoples. Needless to say, this did not go over very well with the Palestinians, who blasted the statements as ignorant and racist. 

Mitt Romney told Jewish donors Monday that their culture is part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the nearby Palestinians, outraging Palestinian leaders who called his comments racist and out of touch.

"As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality," the Republican presidential candidate told about 40 wealthy donors who breakfasted around a U-shaped table at the luxurious King David Hotel.**

"And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things," Romney said, citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the "hand of providence."

Of course Palestinians are not a key source of funding for Romney's campaign so Romney had no problem doubling down on his statements in a National Review editorial. Picking a fight with people who have virtually no representation in the Western media on behalf on people who have immense representation in the Western media would not seem to be a particularly brave thing to do but then again Romney never claimed to be a profile in courage. I do think however that he and his advisers, including the neo-con Dan Senor, really are being honest about their understanding of the difference in economic output between Israel, or more precisely, Jewish Israelis, and Palestinians, whether they live within the 1967 Israeli borders or in the occupied West Bank and restricted Gaza Strip. This honesty is useful. But it's not restricted to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It's something that we see time and time again whenever one group of people have conquered or subjugated another one.

For example, let's say you are taking a shortcut off the expressway from one suburb to another and temporarily wind up in Inner City USA. You're going to notice that the houses and stores (if they exist) are not as new or as clean as in your area. You're going to notice that the people are demographically much different. You may find it prudent to lock your doors and windows.
You may not see a lot of economic activity.
Or let's say that you visit an Indian reservation. You will probably find a number of people who are suffering from alcoholism or unreported sexual assaults or obesity and diabetes. Again, chances are you won't find a huge number of new clean supermarkets.
You could repeat the same scene in a Brazilian favela or a number of Indian cities and so forth and so on.

Now if you lack curiosity or interest in what's going on around you and you REALLY don't want to know that people that look like you might have had something to do with those situations, it would be much easier on your ego to state that those people just have an inferior culture. They have chosen to make bad decisions and that's why they're where they are. It's too bad but unless and until they decide to be more like me, chances are they'll be in the same spot. I'm no racist but why don't they just do blah, blah, blah.. and so on.

On the other hand if you are historically curious or even slightly open to the idea that people aren't all THAT different and few people WANT to be impoverished or poor you might do some research and find out that the black people in the inner city are generally descended from people who had to work for free for over 250 years and were non-citizens for another 100 years. They also had their cultures, languages and religions erased and replaced with an ideology that told them they were the lowest of the low and God didn't look like them or love them. It's only in the past 40-50 years that some of that has started to slowly and fitfully change.

You might do some research and learn that those people you see on the "reservation" had and have a vibrant culture but were defeated in battle, slaughtered en masse and virtually exterminated from the continent. The reservations are almost always located in undesirable places that the larger society doesn't want and are both beyond many local legal protections and often subject to dictates from the Federal government.

Or were you Romney, you might do some basic research and discover that those Palestinians once had the majority of what is today Israel but like the American Indians, have fallen victim to a militarily superior group of people, who having ethnically cleansed much of Israel from Palestinian presence, are stubbornly continuing a policy of occupation, colonization and displacement in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians have been under military occupation longer than I've been alive. One of the critical things about military occupation is that it's rather difficult to build an independent functioning economy. EVERYTHING that a business or entrepreneur would need to build or expand his business can be revoked in the twinkling of an eye by a bully with a gun. Think you'll expand your factory in the next lot? Sorry, the IDF just took that lot over for artillery practice. Considering opening an olive supply business? Too bad, the army and settlers decided to uproot your olive grove for a new road for Jewish settlers. Want to open a pizza delivery business? Well you can forget about 30 minutes or less delivery as there are roadblocks and delays all over your area and even if there weren't, again any soldier who's in a bad mood can arbitrarily decide to prevent you or your drivers from traveling the next 5 miles-for no reason other than she feels like it.

I don't deny that cultures differ nor do I deny that some individuals need a kick in their a$$. Many of us know the uncle or friend who always has his hand out for a loan but avoids job interviews like a vampire avoids sunlight, the sister-in-law who always has the latest cell phone and apps but can't seem to plan for her mortgage, or the ne'er-do-well nephew who has big get rich quick plans that require your financial underwriting. It's precisely because we know these individuals that as individuals we can feel comfortable in saying "Get a job" or "No I'm not giving you any money" or "What you really need to do is blah, blah, blah".

But to generalize to a whole group of people and claim that their problem is their culture seems a bit much. You have to look at the whole picture. That picture is going to include ugly things like racism, genocide, self-hatred, and OCCUPATION. We might even flip the script, as Martin Luther King once suggested, to do an intensified study on the dominant group to ask what is the problem with THEIR culture?

There are several countries with higher per capita GDP than Israel. Would Romney suggest that those countries have a superior culture?
Romney ignored the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its unceasing land theft because those ugly little facts might have a little more to do with Palestinian economic growth than God not loving them or their deficient culture. Of course the Palestinians could have a bad culture that inhibits growth. To be sure, at the very least we would need to run an experiment in which the Palestinians put the Israelis under military occupation for multiple decades, imprison thousands of Israelis without trial or charges, and take more and more land.  Maybe even under those conditions the Israelis would be more economically productive than the Palestinians are today. Only one way to find out!!!

** I just have to mention the horrible irony of Romney giving his speech at the King David Hotel. This was the scene of a horrible terrorist attack by members of the hardline Irgun Jewish group. It killed over 90 people and has never quite been forgiven by the British or repudiated by the Israelis. In fact some Irgun members later became Israeli political leaders. One man's terrorist really is another man's freedom fighter.

What are your thoughts?

Were Romney's statements bigoted?

Does culture impact a society's economic success? If so how much?