Who Runs Kansas Schools: The Courts or The Legislature

Kansas is a centrally located state that has often been ground zero for a number of social changes, some good and some bad. John Brown made his bones in Kansas. It was after all Kansas that rang the death knell for enforced legalized school and other forms of racial segregation in the Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education. The author Thomas Frank chronicled the slow rise of conservative and occasionally racist populism in his noted book "What's the Matter with Kansas". Part of Frank's thesis posits that fiscal conservatives use hot button cultural issues to whip up resentment among the socially conservative base in order to get said base to support policies and ideologies which are bad for them economically. To add insult to injury it was rare that conservative politicians even delivered on promises to the socially conservative segment of their base, instead preferring to promote fiscal conservatism. This theory was really popular among some progressives as it tended to confirm some of their deepest beliefs about conservatives. Frank's thesis is a little out of date since the national energy on one of the hotter social issues of the day, gay marriage, seems to be almost entirely with the liberal pro-gay marriage supporters. 

However another key tenet among the conservative base is the importance of having the people, and not the judges, decide what is correct among competing political ideas. "Activist judges" remains a powerful epithet for many on the right. Some fervently hold to the idea that a great deal of mischief is caused by know it all, elitist, out of touch, Ivy League, smug judges who arrogantly substitute their own preferences for plainly written law or long agreed upon custom.

Or to put it another way some conservatives just throw a fit and start hurling insults when their favored position loses in court. People on the other side are hardly immune to this of course. Check out the liberal reactions to the Supreme Court's Heller decision. Temper tantrums seem to have become more common for everyone. Still, this conservative sensitivity and hostility to the very existence of judicial review was touched recently in Kansas. Like many states Kansas is seeing new battles over education and social spending. Conservatives and liberals almost by definition usually have quite different political preferences for the spending levels in those categories. These battles have not only been touched off by tax cuts or other reductions in spending but by the recession driven crash in property values in many localities. So even if some states wanted to keep the same level of school funding, it was sometimes very difficult to do so. States can't print their own money. States, unlike the Federal government, are generally constitutionally forbidden to run deficits. Still in Kansas, it appears that politics, not necessity is the primary driver of the latest contretemps. It's not necessarily that Kansas politicians can't spend the money. It's that they don't want to do so.

Kansas’ current constitutional crisis has its genesis in a series of cuts to school funding that began in 2009. The cuts were accelerated by a $1.1 billion tax break, which benefited mostly upper-income Kansans, proposed by Governor Brownback and enacted in 2012.

Overall, the Legislature slashed public education funding to 16.5 percent below the 2008 level, triggering significant program reductions in schools across the state. Class sizes have increased, teachers and staff members have been laid off, and essential services for at-risk students were eliminated, even as the state implemented higher academic standards for college and career readiness.

Parents filed a lawsuit in the Kansas courts to challenge the cuts. In Gannon v. State of Kansas, a three-judge trial court ruled in January 2013 for the parents, finding that the cuts reduced per-pupil expenditures far below a level “suitable” to educate all children under Kansas’ standards. To remedy the funding shortfall, the judges ordered that per-pupil expenditures be increased to $4,492 from $3,838, the level previously established as suitable.

Rather than comply, Governor Brownback appealed to the Kansas Supreme Court. A decision is expected this month. A victory for the parents would be heartening, but if it comes, would Governor Brownback and legislative leaders uphold the right to education guaranteed to Kansas school children? The signals thus far are not promising. If the Kansas Supreme Court orders restoration of the funding, legislators are threatening to amend the state’s Constitution by removing the requirement for “suitable” school funding and to strip Kansas courts of jurisdiction to hear school finance cases altogether. And if the amendment fails, they have vowed to defy any court order for increased funding or, at the very least, take the money from higher education.

LINK

So what's your opinion. Most state constitutions make it clear that the state has the responsibility to provide for public education for all. As in most things though the devil is in the details. On the one hand the state can't dodge that responsibility. On the other hand, times are tough all over. If the elected politicians of Kansas decide that their state is best served by a 16.5% funding cut to education, isn't that their business? Or is it ultimately the Court's job to determine what the mix of expenditures should be? Public school outcomes are never just about money in the system but on the other hand are there public schools that have provided better results with much less money? I can't think of too many where I grew up.  You can't cut a school system off at the knees and demand higher performance can you? Or can you? Who should prevail in this battle?

What's your call?

Are legislators and/or executives ever justified in threatening to ignore court rulings they dislike?

HBO Game of Thrones Season 4 Trailer

In case you missed it HBO released its first (I am sure there will be many more) trailer for Season 4 of its hit series "Game of Thrones". The show starts again on Sunday April 6. Enjoy the trailer below the jump if you are into that sort of thing. And as always if you happen to have read all of the books or be one of those know it all people who just looked up the published books' endings, kindly do not ruin it for everyone else, who may wish to watch the series in unspoiled anticipation. The Red Wedding may have been the series' biggest shock (to me at least) but there are several more surprises, twists and turns that may be coming along. My understanding is that the new season will cover at least the second half of book three, A Storm of Swords, which for my money is the most powerful and most disturbing book in GRRM's series. But who knows what the show's writers, producers and directors will choose to include or leave out from that book, how many new storylines they will create from their own imaginations, or how much material they will pull ahead from books four and five. We'll just have to wait and see.

Season 4 Trailer

December Jobs Report and Unemployment

In December the U.S unemployment rate fell to 6.7%. This should have been good news. Being below 7% should be a good thing. It should have been something that was seized on by economists as a sign that the US economy was continuing to recover and move out of the doldrums. We should have seen Democratic partisans run to the nearest microphone to take credit for Presidential economic policies that have led us to this point. (BTW the ability of ANY President-- Republican or Democrat-- to take credit or blame for a single data point in the massive system that is the US economy is far overstated but that never stops supporters or detractors from trying to give him credit or blame in good times or bad).

But this time there was no Vice-President Biden braying and bragging about a "recovery summer" on the way. That's because the greatest nation on the earth, a place that put a man on the moon and defeated Hitler and Tojo in just four years, was only able to create a net 74,000 jobs. Even by the standards of the so-called recovery we've been having this was a horrible number. The average net increase for 2012 and 2013 was a net 182,000 jobs. Even those numbers were just barely short of what was needed to keep up with population growth. The unemployment rate is only below 7% because more people gave up and moved out of the workplace. It's not because companies are on hiring sprees. They're not. At least they're not hiring in the United States.


So this number is hopefully something of a statistical fluke. Maybe there was something that was going on in December that won't be repeated again. Maybe this was the initial impact of ObamaCare. The health care sector lost 6000 jobs. Maybe this had something to do with colder weather. Maybe someone didn't get a clean compile on a program and so the number will be adjusted upwards in the coming months. We shall see. For now all we have is this data. What's more troubling than the unemployment rate is the reason why it's fallen. The overall labor participation rate is hovering at 62.8 percent, which is the lowest level in some 35 years. This is weird. I've always wondered about this because for me, there's no choice but to either be working or looking for work. I'm not yet rich enough to retire. There's no one who would be willing to work in order that I could pursue a life of leisure. So if I lost my job I'd have to keep looking for another one and/or create my own business. And I don't think I'm alone. So what are these discouraged workers doing? That's a mystery. Clearly some of them are working off the books, going back to school, relying on family and friends for food, shelter and income, going on disability or retiring. 

If the low labor participation rate was being primarily driven by retirements, that is by an increasingly older population, well then it would be nothing to worry about. The problem is though is that it's not being driven by retirements. The labor participation rate for workers 65 and older has been on a near inexorable rise since 2000 or so. People are increasingly delaying retirement because they simply can't afford it. Those old people you see in grocery stores or big box stores working as clerks or greeters aren't there because they're bored. No, they need the money, thanks in no small part to the financial sector's destruction of their retirement wealth I would guess. And even among younger workers aged 45 to 54 the labor participation rate is 79.2%, which is the lowest since 1988. As I've wondered before, we may be in a situation where thanks to automation, weak unions, outsourcing and wholesale transfer of industries overseas, the US economy simply doesn't need as many workers as it did before. Period. The average duration of unemployment calculated for December was 37.1 weeks. It was 38 weeks a year ago. So it's not as if this economy has been doing well for a long time now.

The other interesting thing about the job numbers is that not only were most of the gains in low wage sectors (retailing, leisure, and hospitality) but for the first time since 2007 ALL of the net job growth went to one gender. Women. Men had a net loss in jobs. Again, this may all be "statistical noise" which will be corrected in coming months. But right now it looks to me like we have an economy that excels in creating low wage jobs and bailing out banks but doesn't seem to be able to create jobs which support a strong middle class. As usual the black unemployment rate was twice that of the white unemployment rate while the "did not graduate high school" unemployment rate was three times that of those with a college degree. And although both political parties will use this report in their battle over extending unemployment benefits again, I think this report and the mostly anemic jobs reports that came before it only support my belief that we need some radical changes in economic policies.
Growth in jobs slows sharply

What do you think of the jobs report?

If you lost your job how long could you last without a new job?

Should unemployment benefits be extended?

Movie Reviews: We're the Millers, Elysium

We're the Millers
directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber

I guess that Jennifer Aniston and/or her agent(s) would like you to know that she is still an attractive actress. Maybe this would explain in part her character's striptease in We're the Millers which echoes but sadly doesn't really live up to her similar turn in Horrible Bosses as a sexually harassing dentist. There, the storyline, absurd as it was made sense in its own wacky way. There was a point to it. But in We're The Millers, well it's pretty much just an excuse to see Aniston in bra and panties. Not that there's anything wrong with that of course (ha!) but because the story is so lacking I found the display to be pandering and desperate. This could have been a better movie but unfortunately at every single decision point it chooses to go for the cheap laugh and the lowest common denominator. Jokes around incest, gay sex, lesbian sex, sexually repressed evangelicals, underage sex and more gay sex abound. In fact these jokes are pretty much the film's meat and potatoes. It's a shame because every so often you happen to see a funny joke unrelated to the above topics or you realize that Aniston actually has pretty good comic timing, given the proper material.
But so it goes. This film was quite financially successful. There's even room for a possible sequel. I don't want to sound like I can never appreciate films like this because sometimes I can. I guess I just wasn't in the mood for that stuff when I watched the movie. As always YMMV. At its best this is like a much raunchier and lower-brow Three's Company with the usual misunderstandings and sexual innuendo. There is very little here that is subtle.


David Clark (Jason Sudeikis) is a sad sack middle aged drug dealer. At an age when the more ambitious drug dealers have long since either moved up to management or out of the drug business entirely, Dave is still working the streets selling bags of pot to all comers, including, in an embarrassing scene, a former college classmate who's happy to see him but wonders what he's still doing on the streets. Dave has a thing for his apartment building neighbor Rose (Aniston) a stripper who is highly contemptuous of both Dave's lack of financial success and severe lack of game, among other things.

When Dave has a strange unexplained attack of conscience and tries to protect another neighbor, the virginal and somewhat mentally slow Kenny (Will Poulter), and a sharp tongued homeless girl Casey (Emma Roberts) from being assaulted by local thugs, he himself becomes the victim of an assault and home invasion. Dave's entire stash of marijuana and cash is stolen. This isn't good because his ultimate boss Brad (Ed Helms), another former college buddy of Dave's, doesn't want to hear excuses about missing drugs or money. As Brad is a cheerfully manipulative sort, rather than have Dave murdered in a variety of different ways, he suggests that Dave do a pickup of a drug shipment in Mexico for him. This will settle the debt and he'll even pay Dave a small fee (small by Brad's standards) to do the job. As the alternative is to be thrown in Brad's orca tank, be beaten to death, or simply be shot on the spot, Dave agrees to the job.

Not being completely stupid Dave decides that a family traveling to Mexico will be less suspicious than a single male. So by hook and by crook he convinces Rose, Kenny and Casey to pose as his wife and children. Dave believes it will be a simple run across the border as Brad has already identified a corrupt border agent to facilitate their travel. Of course nothing goes as planned. The foursome have to deal with dangerous drug lords, corrupt Mexican police who are bent on rape, repressed horny evangelicals and of course their active and extremely profane dislike of each other. Obviously and somewhat predictably they also learn more about each other as they travel together.
There is some female toplessness, male nudity, and crude jokes virtually non stop. I laughed a few times but ultimately this demented road trip movie was only so-so for me. Take it or leave it.
TRAILER






Elysium
directed by Neil Blomkamp

Do you work hard for your money? Do you have a place to stay that is warm and dry? Do you have access to health care? Do you have money in your pocket and extra room in your home? Can you easily get enough to eat? Do you have clean drinking water? Do you make more than $2/day? Well if you do you're pretty privileged compared to a number of people on this planet, believe it or not. You didn't create this world or the system you live under but you're benefiting from it all the same. Now what if that homeless man you gave a dollar to on the way home decided that there was really no good reason why he and his shouldn't have access to all the nice things you had in your life. And he was going to come home with you whether you liked it or not so that he could enjoy such things. Would you think this good? It all depends on how you see your duty towards your fellow man and woman. Your answer might also change depending on whether you thought that you bore responsibility for this man's plight or whether he needed to pick himself by his bootstraps and do better. There is after all a point where letting someone else on the lifeboat causes the boat to capsize and everyone to die. That's no good. But neither is sabotaging all the other lifeboats but yours on a sinking ship and laughing maniacally at the people drowning for lack of a boat. Does the US and/or Europe have any responsibility to the teeming masses of India, Africa and China?

The movie Elysium doesn't bother to excavate too deeply into certain ethical questions, preferring very broadly drawn good guys and bad guys but all the same the movie definitely takes a side. It has an easily identifiable subtext around such issues as illegal immigration, equality, and health care. Although some of the villains are over the top evil, all the same a few of them have some uncomfortable points to make about scarcity and who gets what.  Anyway it's the year 2154. Earth is overpopulated (apparently mostly with darker people), degraded and half-destroyed via war and environmental problems. Everyone is poor and has poor health care. The rich people (disproportionately Caucasian though there are quite a few South Asians among their number) have decamped to a MASSIVE space station named Elysium. There they enjoy artificial gravity and atmosphere, clean water, good food, low population density and most importantly state of the art health care that can quickly cure such things as leukemia, cancer of any kind, and just about any damage to the body. Obviously this life is not for everyone. Elysium is a democracy but Secretary of Defense Delacourt (Jodie Foster) has accrued more power to herself. She takes a very hard line on "infiltrators" from Earth, preferring to kill them instead of deporting them. She uses Kruger (Sharlto Copley from District 9) to handle her dirty work on Earth. Delacourt was originally conceived as a man but I can't imagine anyone else but Foster in that role. Icy.

Back on Earth, factory worker and parolee Max Da Costa (Matt Damon) works for Armadyne Corporation, the Elysian owned corporation that builds the machines and robots that enforce curfews and act as brutal police to keep the Earth's population in line. The irony of this isn't lost on Max. He dreams of one day getting to Elysium as well as taking the (mostly unrequited) love of his life Frey (the beautiful Alice Braga from City of God) and her daughter along with him. Max and Frey grew up together but for a variety of reasons those two brave strangers never could really get it right.

As you might imagine the CEO of Armadyne John Carlyle (William Fichtner) is dismissive and contemptuous of the risks to his earthly workers. He doesn't even want earthly people to breathe on him, let alone do anything so outrageous as protest for better wages or workplace safety. This attitude is reflected in all the lower management ranks. So when a supervisor orders Max to do something risky or lose his job, Max feels he has no alternative but to comply. But doing so exposes him to severe radiation poisoning. He has 3-5 days to live. He could easily be cured if he were a resident of Elysium but he's not. So Max has nothing to lose. He's now a very dangerous, motivated and desperate man. Max goes to local criminal/smuggler/hacker Spider (Wagner Moura from Elite Squad) to get Spider to smuggle him into Elysium. But Spider has his own interests. And involved in a power struggle with President Patel (Faran Tahir), Delacourt and Fichtner lose control of something big which everyone will be interested in, but especially Spider and the brutal Kruger. It could change the entire relationship between Earth and Elysium.

There is a fair amount of violent action and sci-fi effects. I really liked Copley's work here. His character epitomizes barely restrained savagery. And if he slips his leash you had better run. I thought this was a fun film that was definitely worth checking out.
TRAILER

Robert Gates' New Book Attacks Obama

I don't know how it's handled in the Federal government workforce but in the private institutions I've worked in, often but not always, when someone decides to leave for greener pastures, there is an exit interview, formal or not. This usually depends on how "important" you are, how long you've been there, whether you're direct hire or contract and how easy you are to replace. Your boss and/or the HR department want to know why you're leaving, what they could have done differently to make you stay, if you enjoyed your time working at Penetrode Inc., whether you might ever want to return, or if they would ever be interested in having you back. I've had a few of these. Usually both sides are professional and cautious. Although you and/or your boss might be secretly or not so secretly delighted that you are finally departing, the custom is often to play things close to the vest. After all no one wants to be sued or tip their hand about a possible lawsuit. And even ignoring legal unpleasantness, usually neither the employer or especially, a wise employee, wants to burn down a bridge they might want to come back across. So the employee mouths the necessary pieties about an exciting new opportunity he just couldn't pass up and the boss says she's sorry to lose such a key part of her team but happy that her former subordinate is moving on to bigger and better things.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates evidently decided that he would ignore those conventions in his new book Duty, which details his experiences under the Obama Administration. He himself says that he didn't really enjoy his time there. I think it's fair to infer that he didn't much like or respect many of the people he worked with. So if this book was his exit interview it was a big "F*** All Y'all!!" to his former team members.

• In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”

• Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat, Gates asserts that Obama had more than doubts about the course he had charted in Afghanistan. The president was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail,” Gates writes

• “The controlling nature of the Obama White House, and its determination to take credit for every good thing that happened while giving none to the career folks in the trenches who had actually done the work, offended Secretary Clinton as much as it did me,” Mr Gates writes. In one meeting, Mr. Gates says that he challenged Mr. Biden and Thomas Donilon, then Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, when they tried to pass orders to him on behalf of the president. “The last time I checked, neither of you are in the chain of command,” Mr. Gates says he told the two men. Mr. Gates said he expected to deal directly with the president on such orders.

• In particular, Mr. Gates said he was incensed by the National Security Staff and their controlling nature. “Much of my conflicts with the Obama administration during the first two years weren’t over policy initiatives from the White House but rather the NSS’s micromanagement and operational meddling,” he writes. “For an NSS staff member to call a four-star combatant commander or field commander would have been unthinkable when I worked at the White House – and probably cause for dismissal. It became routine under Obama.”

• In “Duty,” Gates describes his outwardly calm demeanor as a facade. Underneath, he writes, he was frequently “seething” and “running out of patience on multiple fronts.”

I don't think this is all that big of a deal nor is it unprecedented. Sometimes I think that everyone who is anyone in a Presidential Administration (and many who aren't) will write a book purporting to give the inside scoop and tell the "real story" of how everything went wrong when the President didn't listen to him. I'm sure that right now some intern in the event planning office is writing a book designed to settle scores. Controversy sells. But Gates' book does show that the President's initial team of rivals approach had some limitations. Perhaps the next President, when faced with the question of whether s/he should keep on a cabinet member from the opposite political party will remember Robert Gates' book and think better of it. 

Is this no big deal?

Have you ever badmouthed former employers/co-workers? 

Is it a mistake to keep people from a different party in key positions?

Do any of Gates revelations about the President's managerial style concern you?

Book Reviews: Dying Is My Business, Insomnia

Dying Is My Business
by Nicholas Kaufmann

If you like the Harry Dresden series or any of the numerous other urban fantasies about modern day magic then you really ought to get this book. I bought it when I was looking for something else. When I finally started to read it I didn't want to put it down. I think I finished it in two days. I'm sure it wasn't more than three. So I can't really give it higher praise than that. I think this is first in a series.
Trent is a "collector" for a Brooklyn, NY crime boss named Underwood. By collector I don't mean he collects monetary debts though he's done that in the past. No, Underwood sends Trent out on "special" assignments. Underwood craves information, antique, rare or legendary items, or people who can provide him leads about the first two things I mentioned. Trent usually tries to leave the rough stuff to Underwood's other primary enforcers but this isn't always possible. Underwood could care less if Trent or anyone else gets hurt in the process of collection. Mostly this is because Underwood is sociopathic but it's also because Underwood and his goons know that Trent can't be killed. Any time Trent is killed, he rises again. But the person in closest proximity to Trent dies in his place. Trent feels guilty about this and has actually started keeping a journal of the people who have died in that manner. But his memory doesn't go past a year. He doesn't know his real name or where he's from. Underwood claims to have some of that information and be looking for more. Trent is almost certain that Underwood is lying to him but he's desperate for information and wants to believe Underwood.

After Trent delivers a man to Underwood, Underwood assigns Trent to retrieve a very special box that's in someone else's possession. Trent is ordered to bring the unopened box back to Underwood without peeking inside it. And lastly, Underwood wants Trent to kill the people who currently have the box. He is particularly insistent on this last order. Although Underwood can't really kill Trent, as he reminds him he could easily make Trent wish he were dead or refuse to share information he's discovered about Trent's background, which to Trent, would be just as bad as physical torture.

Thus properly motivated, Trent sallies forth to do his master's bidding, as he has many times before. This time proves to be different. The box was only temporarily in the possession of the targeted people, a woman named Bethany and a man named Thornton. They've hidden it somewhere else. And then before Trent can find out where he and his new companions are attacked by creatures that Trent previously didn't believe existed. Trent discovers that he has abilities that he didn't know he had. He also learns, though his resurrection abilities should have been evidence enough, that magic is real. Bethany is a sorceress and possibly of Sidhe heritage while Thornton is a werewolf. And they're the good guys. Although they may not know what's in the box Bethany and Thornton are part of an organization tasked to recover and archive items of great magical power, lest they be used by people of evil desires. They (primarily Bethany) have a wary trust for Trent as he came to their aid. Trent decides to work with them for a while. He finds that the world's real history includes magic, dragons, elves, and other supposedly fanciful beings. Trent drifts away from his employer's control. He gains a certain sense of independence and morality. This is not good for Trent's health. Underwood insists that employees follow orders exactly or be severely punished. Underwood has a strange ability to locate errant employees, who usually become late ex-employees. Several competing groups launch a search for the box. Trent's new powers surprise, impress or worry his new found friends. They tell him he does impossible things. To hear that coming from magicians, werewolves, healers, dragons and vampires is something which bothers Trent almost as much as Underwood's ability to track him down. Trent's also struggling internally over whether to betray Bethany and Thornton, who initially think that he randomly found them.

The story pacing kept me interested and might keep you excited as well. It's as much a chase story as anything else. It very adroitly balances the supernatural and the noir. This is written in first person. The characters are not as important as the plot. This book moves. It's like driving down the expressway the wrong way at 100 MPH and not hitting anyone...barely. There are only a few info dumps. Given that they're fighting for their lives and more almost through the entire book , Bethany and friends don't have the time or inclination to sit down and explain everything to the flabbergasted Trent. Whether they're asking for help from a dragon who lives under NYC or trying to find a way to kill immortal knights who can shift dimensions the good guys have their hands full every page. I was very impressed and really really hope that there is a sequel. I think I've figured out who Trent really is. I'm curious to see if I'm correct.






Insomnia
by Stephen King

Nobody gets out of this world alive. Depending on how you look at it that can be a source of relief or horror. King uses both points of view in his book Insomnia.  As I age I find myself unfortunately having to spend more time in and becoming more familiar with hospitals, usually but not always, because of older relatives. When you're walking through hospital lobbies or reading books in waiting rooms you can't help but notice the older and/or sick people, many of whom can't walk, can't talk or have other obvious frailties. It's sobering to realize that if I live long enough, one day that will be me. All of us will trade youthful energy or even middle aged maturity for old aged weakness and eventually death. So you had better enjoy your youth, your health and your independence of action while you still have it because some day you won't. That said, though as the joke goes just because there's snow on the mountain top doesn't mean there's not fire down below. King builds a sympathetic and effective depiction of older heroes and heroines, who may not have the bodies or strength they once had, but make up for it with experience, empathy and wisdom. Age is not always a bad thing even if we too often see its impacts as bad. It helps that there's a lot of humor in the book. King could have cut this story in half and just focused on the pains and irritations of age and loss. It still would have been a great read and something that was non-supernatural horror. But he didn't do that. The everyday horrors of age and physical or mental weakness are mirrored by an subtle and increasing supernatural threat.

Insomnia is an older book, which for some strange reason I just recently got around to reading during my all too short holiday break. As I nearly broke my ankle doing something stupid I had plenty of time to lay on the couch and read. Insomnia has allusions to King's Dark Tower series as well as to The Talisman, which King co-wrote with Peter Straub. It could possibly also have links to It and to Dreamcatcher. These are teased out throughout the book and I didn't pick up on them at first. I'm sure there are other links and references which I missed but will be obvious to other King fans. Parts of this story also reminded me of the Madeleine L'Engle A Wrinkle in Time  and Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series.
Similar to many King stories this takes place in Maine, the city of Derry to be exact. As usual, King's eye for accents and everyday conversations firmly embed this story in reality, so much so that when the paranormal starts to intrude you are just as surprised and disturbed by this as the protagonists are.

Ralph Roberts is a seventy something man who, at the book's start is losing his wife Carolyn, the love of his life, to a brain tumor. Although other brain specialists tell him it's just one of those things and probably nothing could have been done, Ralph can't help but partially blame his wife's primary physician, Dr. Litchfield, for misdiagnosing his wife's headaches. Derry's citizens are also in the middle of an abortion rights brouhaha, as pro-choice activist Susan Day is coming to speak. She is fiercely opposed by Derry's pro-life contingent, who tend to be mostly older people except for a small radical anti-abortion splinter cell led by a young man named Ed Deepneau. Deepneau is Ralph's neighbor. He's formerly someone the genially and generally pro-choice Ralph considered a friend. That is until Ed went off the deep end and brutally assaulted his wife. This action, combined with some odd, really insane, things that Ed told Ralph, makes Ralph quite wary of Ed. After Carolyn dies, Ralph suffers really bad insomnia. He can't sleep. Ralph wakes up earlier and earlier each night until he's running on 2-3 hours of sleep. And then he starts to see things, things that if he told anyone about would likely get him involuntarily committed. But these things appear to be real. And some of the entities that Ralph sees also see him. Reality and hyperreality start to merge in an adult Alice in Wonderland sort of way. And what's seen can't be unseen. What's done can't be undone. Ralph and his friend Lois, who is the only other person who has his visions, are pulled into an eternal battle fought in a number of different planes of existence.

This book is almost 700 pages. I thought the build up might have moved a little more quickly. But even a verbose Stephen King, is well, still Stephen King. Good stuff and if you haven't read it already I think it's worthwhile. Of course I'm biased as King has always been a favorite. Like few other popular writers King remains unflinching in his ability to describe the good and bad in humans. Whether it's the sudden flash of resentment we feel towards someone who cuts us off on the road, the fierce love we have for family and intimates or the suspicion we have towards those unlike us, King captures these emotions in a quite realistic way. I think I know where King, the real man, stands on abortion rights and gun control. Doubtless some who disagree with his stances might not like certain depictions in Insomnia. But it's fair to say that King the author fairly and occasionally gleefully illuminates inconsistencies and failings in both the pro-choice and pro-life positions. His characters are messy, just like real life.  

Movie Reviews-Don Jon, 47 Ronin

Don Jon
directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Don Jon is a nice heartwarming little comedy despite its unfortunate overreliance on broad stereotypes of East Coast Italian-Americans and its explicit subject matter. Although it's not really in the same universe as (500) Days of Summer, like that film it has something to say about how men and women see and use each other. There does appear to be another nod to that film when the protagonist's little sister can see things more clearly than the protagonist. The growth and change is once again done primarily by the male character.  I appreciated that this movie subtly called both men and women on the carpet for unrealistic and unhealthy expectations. Everyone has fantasies. They can be escapist but they can also shape what we desire in the real world. Some argue that these fantasies are completely socially constructed and unhealthy. I tend to disagree with that. But the cultural zeitgeist tends to be that male fantasies are nasty, degrading and disgusting and should be suppressed if not stamped out while female fantasies are wholesome, uplifiting and something that males should aspire to fulfill. Right. Well as anyone who's ever been intimate with anyone knows, the reality is usually very different than the fantasy. Often the reality is better in the long run though it's always more challenging. The film seems to be saying that there's nothing wrong with fantasies per se, but that you should never let fantasies prevent you from enjoying real life. 

Jon Martello (JGL) is a bartender who appears to have been a perfect fit for The Jersey Shore. As he explains in voice over there are a few things he really cares about. These include his friends, his family, his girls, his ride, his body, his church, his home and his porn. That's pretty much it. He and his friends Danny (Jeremy Luke) and Bobby (Rob Brown) do the dance club/night club circuit where they attempt to have as much meaningless sex as possible with the female versions of themselves. They can be friends because they all have slightly different tastes in women. Jon, aka Don Jon for his success at loving them and leaving them, prefers the leggy hourglass shape. Bobby likes a woman with a healthy bottom frame while Danny seeks a more slender figure. Their preferences all occasionally overlap of course but one thing that all three men can agree upon is that becoming attached to just one woman let alone getting married is completely out of the question. 

Jon however has found that no matter how much or what kind of sex he has there's no woman out there who can give him the physical and emotional transcendence he attains from visual pornography. So as far as Jon is concerned porn is a permanent part of his life. Any woman he's intimate with will just have to accept that. But when he has a chance meeting with Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johanssen) this is put to the test. Barbara meets or far exceeds all of Jon's physical requirements, so much so that he tells his stunned buddies that she is beyond a "10". When he admits to being in love his friends know he's lost his mind. Barbara's mojo is such that she can make Jon wait for intimacy until she's ready. This is unheard of! Barbara can even force Jon to go back to night college classes.The white collar worker Barbara doesn't see herself in a long term relationship with someone who didn't graduate college. Jon's parents, Jon Sr. (Tony Danza) and Angela (Glenn Headley) are super delighted that Jon finally appears to be on the verge of settling down and starting a family. 

Things look like they're going well. But both over time and in some darkly humorous sudden shock setpieces, Barbara reveals both deliberately and unwittingly that she has fantasies and expectations that if applied to real men, are just as restrictive and unfair as Jon's porn driven dreams of no holes barred sex are to women. Barbara doesn't like pornography and is not shy about letting Jon know it either. This leads to static and to Jon questioning his values and what he wants out of life. An older student in his class, Esther (Julianne Moore) provides a different sort of catalyst to Jon's growth. This was Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut. It worked. It's a smart funny film. It's ironic and probably just part of the human condition that we can see so clearly the weaknesses, contradictions and foolishness in someone else's fantasies while being blind to similar drawbacks in our own. Such is life. Be aware that Don Jon contains numerous brief clips from hard core adult movies which are used to puncutate Jon's thoughts or ridicule his oft-altered state of mind. His frequent confessions are also played for laughs.
TRAILER




47 Ronin
directed by Carl Erik Rinsch

47 Ronin is a fantastical reinterpretation of the true story of 47 Ronin in Japan, who against the odds and the law avenged the unrighteous death of their feudal lord. 47 Ronin should have been a better movie. Unfortunately there is never a sense of massive scale or that these particular masterless samurai are such bada$$es that being outnumbered by high ratios is no big deal for them. If you wish to impress me that only 47 men pulled off an impossible task then you need to show me greater numbers of opponents so that I understand. Give me a way to tell the Ronin apart. Have some of them have an interesting backstory or special power. For example this was done to great effect in the first Matrix movie (where Neo and Trinity storm the building to save Morpheus), the movie Equilibrium (where Preston fought his way past all the bodyguards to kill Brandt and DuPont), or the classic Five Deadly Venoms movie (pick any scene). Unfortunately 47 Ronin doesn't really have any scenes like that until the very end where it's probably a bit too late. This is definitely a wait for DVD, Saturday afternoon kind of film.

Nevertheless the story is quite familiar even though I hadn't heard of it previously. Some things are just universal. We have familial rivalries, deceit, forbidden love, death before dishonor, the execution of a beloved father figure, the destruction of a clan's power and a princess captured by her family's enemies and forced to marry those who murdered her father. And bloody revenge. I wonder if George R.R. Martin was familiar with this story.
One thing that doesn't translate well in my opinion is the Japanese tradition of seppuku, or ritual suicide to avoid or atone for misdeeds or dishonor. It's one thing to fight to the last man giving no quarter and accepting none, blow yourself up in order to take down some of THEM with you, or take a position that you know will be overrun in the hopes that your fight until hell freezes over and then fight on the ice sacrifice will inspire fear in your enemies or give your distant comrades enough time to regroup and avenge you. I get that. It's something else again to kill yourself because you offended your military leader or broke some code of honor. No thanks. If I'm going to die anyway I'm taking some enemies with me.

When Kai (Keanu Reeves) is a child he is discovered running away from a witch/demon den by Japanese soldiers. He's half dead already. As the soldiers don't trust him anyway they are about to kill him but are prevented from doing so by their Lord Asano (Min Tanaka). Lord Asano is a kindly man and raises Kai as his ward. This doesn't prevent his soldiers from bullying Kai about his mixed ancestry or prevent Kai from having to accept his low non-Samurai status. As a child Kai grew friendly with Lord Asano's daughter and heir, Mika. As an adult he and the beautiful Mika (Kou Shibasaki) struggle with some obvious and complicated feelings for each other. Lord Asano is blind to this but his other samurai pick up on it and don't like it one bit.

During a hunt for a wild magical beast Kai notices some strange events in the forest but is ridiculed when he tries to bring this to others' attention, especially Oishi's (Hiroyuki Sanada). Oishi is Lord Asano's most powerful and loyal retainer. But he's not overly fond of Kai. The shogun (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) and the powerful Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano) are arriving for festivities and a tournament. Lord Kira has goo goo eyes for Mika, who isn't betrothed yet. He lets her know of his interest by the traditional time honored male tactics of the slow gaze that takes her in from head to toe, the invasion of personal space and of course the old mistaking her for her father's concubine routine. Do those moves still work ladies? Anyway via sorcery from Kira's concubine, advisor and much much more, Mizuki (Rinko Kukuchi):

• The Asano family loses the tournament.
• Kai is disgraced and sold into slavery.
• Lord Asano is forced to kill himself.
• The Asano lands pass into Kira's control.
• Asano's samurai are stripped of titles and expelled, except for Oishi who is arrested and tortured for months.
• Sansa Stark Mika Asano is compelled to marry the smirking Lord Kira, in order to bring peace between the two families.
• Revenge is strictly forbidden via direct order of the Shogun himself.

But if you want to stop revenge you never should have left Oishi alive. Inexplicably released from prison Osihi goes to find Kai. They're going to put the band back together. They intend to take bloody revenge and shake the pillars of heaven. This was okay just somewhat underwhelming. The penultimate battles were nice but most of the film just didn't live up to what I thought it could have been. As usual, Reeves is a bit vacant. There is a fair amount of magic and fantasy interwoven into the story. I've skipped the trailer here as the ones I've seen give away the film's only impressive surprise. And I don't know if anyone told Megyn Kelly but in the actual historical event there weren't any Caucasian or even semi-Caucasian Ronin. 47 Ronin is visually impressive at times but there wasn't enough there.