Music Reviews: Little Milton

Little Milton

James "Little Milton" Campbell (1934-2005) was best known and marketed as a blues musician and singer. However, placing him solely in this category was by his own admission somewhat problematic. Little Milton grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry and could have been the next Charley Pride. He was a lifelong country music fan. When he turned to blues in his teens and early twenties, blues was already morphing into rock-n-roll and post-war R&B. On the surface, Little Milton's sound, especially by the sixties and later, was different from the older music pioneered by Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf and Jimmy Reed. Little Milton knew, respected and occasionally worked with the older musicians. Once, before a concert, Little Milton told Howling Wolf that he admired Wolf's expensive flashy cuff links. After the show Howling Wolf called Little Milton over and gave him the cuff links as a gift, jokingly warning him the next time Little Milton saw Wolf with something nice on, to keep his admiration to himself. Little Milton's musical arrangements and vocal timbre, (similar to that of BB King who was an influence), owed much to jazz, jump blues and the burgeoning soul and funk genres. Little Milton worked the same circuit as performers like Tyrone Davis, Bobby Bland and Wilson Pickett. So Little Milton was almost completely overlooked by white audiences during the sixties blues revival as he was not DORF. Unlike many other black blues artists Little Milton retained a solid, though declining popularity with black blues and soul audiences. Through the seventies and beyond his bands would always open with hits by contemporary black performers such as Earth Wind and Fire, The Commodores, Michael Jackson and Prince. He received little attention from the white blues market until very late in life. Life is funny like that. It's odd that different groups who will show up together at a sports event will often decline to attend a concert if either group thinks that too many of THOSE OTHER PEOPLE will be there. But so it goes.

Little Milton, BB King and Albert King 1970 Memphis

Little Milton had a rich smooth creamy baritone voice. But so did many other singers. But few people had Little Milton's vocal range and control. For Little Milton his voice truly was an instrument. He had the same amount of power whether he was singing in a velvet whisper or letting loose with one of his trademark bass to falsetto screams. If Little Milton had been born a different race or in a different time period he may well have become an opera singer. But he was born a black man in pre-war Mississippi so he became a bluesman. As far as guitar Little Milton was influenced by such heavyweights as T-Bone Walker, Ike Turner (who discovered him and got him his first record contract), BB King, Eddie Cusic and Joe Willie Wilkins. As alluded to earlier, because Little Milton's voice was so spectacular, a lot of his recordings, particularly during the sixties, featured his singing far more than his guitar playing. During live shows he would often not even put on his guitar until a third of the way through the show. So some people who were just there for guitar pyrotechnics might have missed out if they left early. Their loss. His live work would often feature a heavier thicker tone than he used for recording.  Little Milton understood that you can't have the volume and excitement turned all the way up or all the way down all the time. His approach was very dynamic. What makes me passionate about blues is how its best practitioners can use tension and release to move you adroitly through very different emotional states. Listen to Spring to hear what I am trying to express. Milton holds vocal notes for 12 seconds or more (!) and occasionally does the same thing with his guitar. 

There were about five major musical periods to Little Milton's work.
(A) Sun Records in the early fifties
(B) Bobbin and Meteor records in the late fifties
(C) Chess Records in the early to late sixties
(D) Stax Records in the late sixties and early seventies
(E) Malaco, Rounder and Evidence Records
My favorite work tends to be the Stax releases, which I think saw a balance between guitar and vocals, popular and classic, which wasn't reached before or since. But with Little Milton you can't go too wrong with much of his recorded output. If you like blues or soul but think that too many guitarists overplay then Little Milton might be someone you should hear. He very rarely overplayed and usually left audiences wanting more. He wasn't just doing 12 bar blues. Little Milton sometimes evinced frustration with audiences who only wanted to hear that or bands who were limited to that style. Little Milton's music always had a very strong groove and swing. I took this for granted but when I heard some rock groups cover his music the missing elements were painfully obvious. Occasionally I even listen to some of the sickly sweet love/pop songs he did at Chess. He was occasionally unfairly dismissed as a BB King clone. Little Milton worked very hard to find his own voice. He thought others should do the same. Little Milton, like some of his contemporaries such as Sam Cooke and James Brown, asserted control over his career. He managed and produced himself and later handled his own bookings and publishing, a rare feat in the music industry then and now. As he said of learning the business of music "Well, every artist should do that if they're capable of doing it. It'll keep you from being a total fool." He also strongly disdained the stereotype of an ignorant drunk disheveled black musician. Little Milton believed in taking care of business. He and his wife booked and promoted such artists as Tyrone Davis, Denise LaSalle, and Millie Jackson. And they did so for a much lower percentage than other promoters.

In the Wilson Pickett styled I Play Dirty Little Milton boasts to women that he "hits hard below the belt" and that they will "come back for more". This song was actually atypical for him because in most of his songs he was the one doing the begging. The 1958 song I'm A Lonely Man does sound similar to contemporary BB King work. Little Milton has said at that time he was just trying to get his name out there and play whatever was popular. I like the jazzy jump blues sound of She Put A Spell On Me. My favorite Little Milton song is his take on the Otis Redding ballad That's How Strong My Love Is. There's no guitar solo to speak of but his singing is truly sublime. The strings are a nice touch. That song has been proven in all 50 states to cause men to spontaneously propose marriage or women to suddenly conceive. Strong stuff. If you listen to no other song, you should listen to that one. On the other hand if you really want to hear Little Milton stretch out on guitar check out the live versions of That's What Love Will Make You Do and Tell Me It's Not True. His tone is round, crunchy and full without being too harsh or trebly. He explores the entire sonic range of the guitar, a novel idea which unfortunately is lost to most blues guitarists today. If You Talk In Your Sleep finds Little Milton cautioning his married lover not to spill the beans to her husband. I think most blues/soul fans are familiar with Little Milton's version of the Little Willie John song All Around The World or as it was known in Little Milton's remake, Grits Ain't Groceries. And Little Bluebird shows all the elements of the Little Milton sound, classy uptown horns, string section, strong deep bass, a guitar sound equally glassy and distorted and powerful masculine vocals that hold notes FOREVER.

Spring (Live at Montreux)  That's How Strong My Love Is That's What Love Will Make You Do
If You Talk In Your Sleep Walking The Backstreets And Crying 
Tell Me It's Not True (Live at Montreux) 
Grits Ain't Groceries (aka All Around The World) I'm A Lonely Man
Let Me Down Easy(Live at Montreux) I Can't Quit You Baby (Live) I Wonder Why  Steal Away
I Play Dirty So Mean To Me Little Bluebird She Put A Spell On Me Feel So Bad
We're Gonna Make It I'd Rather Go Blind I Can't Quit You Baby
You're Gonna Make Me Cry  His Old Lady And My Old Lady  The Blues Is Alright
My Dog And Me (w/Gov't Mule)

Student Loan Repayment Strike

I went to college in the Pleistocene epoch when colleges did not cost as much as they do today. I was fortunate enough to have an almost full academic scholarship, some money saved from summer jobs, access to Pell grants and finally a supportive and demanding father who would and did move heaven and earth to ensure that I graduated on time with no excuses and no debts. The idea of taking out massive loans just to obtain an undergraduate degree was completely foreign to me. The world has changed since the days of yore. It's much more difficult to obtain scholarships and grants. The cost of private and public colleges has skyrocketed. Free money has dried up. If you want to go to college and are not a child of either the 1% or parents who are obsessive savers, loans will likely be a large part of how you pay for your schooling. The obvious problem with loans, as opposed to scholarships, personal savings, grants and money from Mom and Dad, is that you have to pay the loans back. Nobody lends money with any other expectation. That's why they're called loans and not gifts. Although a college degree has increasingly become a requirement for a chance to enter the precarious middle class, it is also more important than ever to get the proper college degree from a respectable university. Just having the B.S. or B.A. behind your name isn't at all a guarantee of finding a good job, particularly if you are of visible/undeniable African descent , but that is a different post. Getting a BS degree from a BS university may only net you a BS job. Many people find this out the hard way when they graduate only to discover that their current skill sets and newly minted alleged education will get them a job that barely allows them to make rent and loan payments each month, if they're lucky. It is a financial pain in the tuchus to pay back student loans. Generally speaking, the loan can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Some former students or actual dropouts have decided that their best plan of action is to refuse to pay back their loans.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sarah Dieffenbacher is on a debt strike. She's refusing to make payments on the more than $100,000 in federal and private loans she says she owes for studies at a for-profit college that she now considers so worthless she doesn't include it on her resume. The "debt strike" sentiment is catching on. Calling themselves the "Corinthian 100" — named for the troubled Corinthian Colleges, Inc., which operated Everest College, Heald College and WyoTech before agreeing last summer to sell or close its 100-plus campuses — about 100 current and former students are refusing to pay back their loans, according to the Debt Collective group behind the strike.

They're meeting Tuesday with officials from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent government agency that already has asked the courts to grant relief to Corinthian students who collectively have taken out more than $500 million in private student loans. The Education Department is the group's primary target, because they want the department to discharge their loans. A senior department official is scheduled to attend the meeting.

Dieffenbacher said she received an associate's degree in paralegal studies from Everest College in Ontario, California, and later went back for a bachelor's in criminal justice before later dropping out. She said she left school with about $80,000 in federal loans and $30,000 in private loans, but when she went to apply for jobs at law firms she was told her studies didn't count for anything.

Dieffenbacher, who works in collections for a property management company, said she was allowed at first to defer her loan payments, but now should be paying about $1,500 a month that she can't afford. Makenzie Vasquez, of Santa Cruz, California, said she left an eight-month program to become a medical assistant at Everest College in San Jose after six months because she couldn't afford the monthly fees. She said she owes about $31,000 and went into default in November because she hasn't started repayment.

LINK

I've been around for a while now. I have financial obligations that can be tiresome. Sometimes people advised me to take or avoid a certain course of action. Sometimes I listened. Sometimes I didn't. Although not every decision I made worked well I can say that ultimately all of the decisions were mine. Once you're over 18 and certainly once you're over 21, you're an adult. You get to make your own choices. If you decided to attend a sketchy college and overpay for coursework of dubious value that's your fault. If you are wise you will learn from that choice and not do anything that foolish again. I'm not sure you should get a do-over. Although there are a few cases where they are arguably warranted, bailouts almost by definition come with a huge moral hazard problem. The people who get bailed out don't pay the costs of their foolish behavior and thus are more likely to repeat such bad behavior in the future. Additionally other people who are playing by the rules of the game start to feel like suckers. Rationally it may also make sense for them to ignore the rules and default on their debt if the consequences for doing so are no longer punitive. If too many people start to do this the interest rates and fees for loans will increase. Institutions will be less likely to make loans. In extreme situations the market will grind to a halt. But maybe that is the wrong way to look at this. Maybe we should examine this situation not through the lens of loan repayment but rather through consumer protection. If someone sells me something I didn't ask for or is totally worthless then I should have the ability to complain to a consumer protection agency and get some sort of relief. That is the argument the Corinthian 100 are making. If the education was fraudulent should they pay?

I am not 100% unsympathetic to this argument, just 90% unsympathetic. There is no guarantee that a college education will provide any particular individual a path to a well paid career. It's an important factor but ultimately just one among many. Connections, career interest, personal drive, intelligence and the larger economy all play a role. A college or graduate school may boast about its alumni salaries and income but all they are really selling you is an education. What you do with that education is up to you. Still, if someone just doesn't have the money they don't have the money. I would be willing to allow student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy, which is currently not the case. That requires a change in the law. But I would not be willing to allow someone to default just because they entered the real world and learned that they weren't a special snowflake. We do need to rethink how we finance higher education in this country. The structure of loan based financial aid may have done little more than give colleges incentives to raise tuition and salary packages.  There is more than $1 trillion in student debt. We can't keep on in this way. We will see more stories like this.

How do you see this story?

Should the Corinthian 100 be able to walk away from their debt?

Should everyone else be able to walk away from their mortgages or auto loans?

HBO Game of Thrones: Quick Draw Videos

Some people on my facebook feed or at my workplace who pride themselves either on not being up to date on pop culture or on not reading anything remotely fantastical have finally gotten a vague idea that this Game of Thrones television thing is somehow popular in some circles. So they have asked me to explain it to them in a way that they can understand. At this point it's a bit much to try to break down everything that the story includes. And if they didn't pay attention the first time I tried years prior I usually won't have much patience for doing so again.  Maybe I will start using the below new 60 second quick draw video shorts on the lives of Ned Stark, Robb Stark, Joffrey Baratheon, Ygritte, and Khal Drogo to explain the important story elements of the Game of Thrones series to people. I think the videos are good accurate summations of the key events. The videos are useful if someone has a short attention span. Of course hopefully these videos are also amusing to people who've read the books or watched the show. 

Movie Reviews: Sword of Vengeance

Sword of Vengeance
Directed by Jim Weedon

When William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings and became the first Norman King of England, not everyone on the island was thrilled with this turn of events. Some nobles refused to swear allegiance. Others were slow to provide feudal service or managed to be out of town whenever William sent messages requesting same. A few peasants and merchants were always telling William that their tax payment must have gotten lost in the mail. They were sure it would turn up any day now. The church hierarchy remained dominated by Saxons who weren't necessarily loyal to the new Norman overlords. Some folks even mocked William's accent, his illegitimate birth and mother's lowborn status. This last was a really bad idea as William's berserk button was anyone saying ANYTHING remotely negative about his mother. William tended to break things (and people) when someone insulted dear old mum. The people who were the most dismissive and defiant of the Normans were the Saxons in the north of England. They had rustled up a rival Saxon heir to the throne. They were buoyed by a Danish incursion (at this time the Danish and northern Saxons were close kin). Apparently the Northern English believed that William was too far away to do anything to them. Well they were wrong about that. This was not an era that rewarded weak or indecisive leaders. And William was neither. He was a brutal man for brutal times. When his enemies refused to bend the knee, William decided to bury those cockroaches, Norman style. William launched an invasion of the North that was considered close to genocide by contemporaneous historians. In what was called the Harrowing, William and his armies not only defeated, executed, chased off or paid off rebel armies, they also ruthlessly and thoroughly destroyed the ability of the North to rebel ever again. 

They accomplished this by purposely targeting non-combatants (including women and children) for slaughter. They burned villages, killed livestock, salted fields, committed public atrocities to cause fear, poisoned wells, destroyed homes, crops and tools, starved out families, and made the North such a wasteland that twenty years later the population was only one quarter of what it had been prior to the Norman depredations. Sword of Vengeance is set in the immediate aftershock of the Harrowing. Earl Durant (Karel Roden), a Norman noble, has taken over large swaths of Northern England that he rules as a virtual king. He only answers to King William the Conqueror, whom he assisted both at Hastings and during the Harrowing. Away with William fighting in France, Durant has left his lands under the control of his two feuding sons Lord Artus (Gianna Giardelli) and Lord Roman (Edward Akrout). They reign supreme over a wasteland in which food and shelter are virtually non-existent if you aren't Norman. Well they reign supreme until a rather intense young man with improbably magnificent sword skills more reminiscent of Japanese kata techniques than medieval European styles, shows up and starts turning Norman soldiers into chop suey. This man, known only as Shadow Walker (Stanley Weber) is cool. We know that not only because of his speed and swagger and name but because he's apparently the first white man to discover cornrows. You know anyone who's brave enough to stand up against the Normans is going to attract attention and loyalty. Shadow Walker gets both from a renegade band of Saxon survivors/refugees. This group, led by the fetching Anna (Annabelle Wallis), shieldmaiden extraordinaire, thinks that Shadow Walker could be just the man they need to lead them to justice.

This movie is rather obviously a spaghetti Western/samurai film translated into the sword and sandals genre. Shadow Walker even has what looks like a Clint Eastwood style poncho. The film has a short running time (85 minutes). It makes the critical mistake of giving too much away in early flashbacks but again stories like these tend to be predictable anyway. It's done by the same people that were behind Hammer of The Gods and is about as violent as that film was. Everything is blue or gray in this movie except for the blood and viscera, which are all too red. I liked this film but even a genre fan such as myself would advise possible viewers that this film is not the best in terms of dialogue or story. In fact the dialogue occasionally is almost laughable. This film is mostly an excuse to see grim people get bloody revenge on those who have wronged them. I'm not sure why I like these films as there aren't a tremendous number of people still around on whom I would like to have bloody revenge but all the same if you're into this sort of thing the movie can be cathartic. I think it's just that I like underdogs and dislike bullies. There is something I appreciate about the idea that one man armed with nothing more than two swords, an obvious back story and a bad attitude, can make a serious difference in the world. 
TRAILER

Book Reviews: Killing Johnny Fry

Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel
by Walter Mosley

Killing Johnny Fry is an older novel by Mosley that I never got around to reading. I had heard both good and bad things about it. But mostly I heard that it was very different from his usual style. So nothing if not curious I finally felt compelled to sit down and read this book during my all too rare and rapidly shrinking lunch breaks.
Well.
Different doesn't begin to describe what's going on here, though the change is still more in subject matter and tone than it is in style. Although the subject matter and language may be something new to Mosley's work, the everyman hero is certainly someone who would have fit quite easily in Mosley's other novels. Although Killing Johnny Fry is not technically pornographic if only because the primary purpose of the text is presumably not physical self-pleasure, Killing Johnny Fry is sexually explicit to the point where it could just as easily be pornography. You say toe-may-toe. I say toe-mah-toe. One might say that Killing Johnny Fry is an erotic novel of adventure. I have often noticed that people, including yours truly, and for that matter animals, often take things for granted. When I was a child my family had two dogs. The older dog would often ignore the toys we gave her until the younger dog tried to play with the toy. The older dog would bare her teeth or grab the toy and walk out of the room. Humans are similar. When someone tries to use or take something of yours without asking, you'll probably protest even if you weren't using the item. I can't steal a classic car from your garage and successfully defend myself by saying that you had not been properly maintaining the vehicle. People often feel that same possessiveness towards providers of their nookie. It doesn't matter if said nookie wasn't very good or the provider was unskilled or indifferent. 

Cordell Carnel is a pudgy phlegmatic middle aged African-American New York City translator who works for various art agents and publishing houses. He's coasting through life. Cordell's girlfriend is also Black. Her name is Joelle. The couple lives apart. Joelle frequently makes it clear that she doesn't want to see Cordell every day. Cordell accepts this. One day he goes to visit Joelle and finds that she's left her apartment door open. Worried he enters the apartment but discovers Joelle (insert euphemism for having sweaty nasty enthusiastic sex) with the very Caucasian Johnny Fry (someone whom Cordell and Joelle met at a party). Johnny and Joelle are doing things that Joelle has never even mentioned to, let alone done with Cordell. The lovers are far too enthralled with each other to notice Cordell. Cordell quickly leaves and doesn't tell Joelle that he saw her.

However the revelation has touched something deep in Cordell. Obviously he immediately starts thinking of ways to murder Johnny Fry (thus the title of the book) but he also re-examines his life and sexual desires, failings and kinks. His hurt, anger, and confusion coalesce into a spinning mandala of lust and re-invention. Cordell also starts to have a LOT more sex with Joelle and other women. His increased desire for Joelle is balanced by his disgust for her. Cordell believes that he's been living life too meekly and too safely. Cordell drops some weight and embarks on an odyssey during which he engages in some truly bizarre activities. Women are usually impressed, excited, and occasionally a little frightened by Cordell's newly revealed capacities. I thought some portions of the story became ridiculous near the end. It is fascinating how the process by which we were all created can be described and experienced so completely differently by men and women. This book is not written like romance novels or 50 Shades of Grey or Twilight. The descriptions are blunt and male. There is humor and philosophy within this story. Cordell is looking for purpose in life, in part by enjoying or enduring sex with many different women. But he's also trying to ascertain what it means to be a healthy individual. Is anyone really healthy? What does love mean? Does it always require possessiveness? What is psychologically pleasing sex? How do men deal with emotional pain? Why do we have sex even if we have no desire or capacity to reproduce? Why do we so often want one person to the exclusion of all others when the world is packed with suitable partners? 

This was an okay albeit graphic story but going forward I think I'll stick with the adventures of Easy Rawlins or Leonid McGill. That might be unfair to Mosley but Killing Johnny Fry was a serious shock to my expectations. If you're looking for something different from Mosley this story is for you. This is a very honest raw book.

Inkster Cops Beat Black Man

So much of how police react to you depends not just on what you do but on you who are. If you are a black man or even a black woman, police are much more likely to see you as a threat to be neutralized than if you are of another race. This is regardless of whether you are actually doing anything wrong. At every point in the justice system black people don't get the benefit of the doubt. A situation that would call for a friendly warning results in snide lectures and tickets. Wallets are mistaken for guns. What would normally require a stern talking to turns into an arrest. A situation that necessitates probation ends up in incarceration. Instead of a ticket you get a beating. A child playing with a toy gun is shot dead. This is a nationwide problem. It's not just Ferguson or the South or in small towns where there is explicit racial hatred far beyond the ordinary. It's not an individual problem but a systemic one. I was recently reminded of this ugly truth when a local retired(?) black man named Floyd Dent, driving through a mostly black city, cruised past a stop sign and was soon after stopped and beaten by city police officers. The police later claimed to have found crack cocaine in Dent's vehicle. This brings to mind Dave Chappelle's skit line of "Sprinkle some crack on him and let's get out of here." Mr. Dent tested negative for drugs. He has no criminal record. He points out that his fingerprints are not on the bag that the police claim to have found in his car. Charges of fleeing and resisting arrest have already been dropped. The drug charges have not been dropped. Dent did have a suspended license. The cop seen punching Mr. Dent in the head had previously been acquitted of, among other things, planting evidence. 

Watch the below video. Make up your own mind. I don't think that the police were defending themselves. They started beating on Dent immediately. This is about hatred, fear and frustration. We can talk about retraining police but the only way to reduce and ultimately stop these incidents is for police to know that they will be imprisoned when found guilty of such actions. That's a very rare occurrence. Otherwise perhaps Cliven Bundy had some good ideas on how to deal with the police?
Fighting back tears, a Detroit man and longtime auto worker with no criminal history, described how Inkster police officers dragged him from his car one night in January, choked him, beat him and tasered him during a traffic stop that was caught on patrol car video. "He was beating me upside the head," Floyd Dent, 57, told a horde of reporters and TV crews during a press conference at his attorney's office Wednesday afternoon, as tears trickled his cheeks. "I was trying to protect my face with my right arm. I heard one of them say, 'tase the M...F. '" 

The Jan. 28 incident was caught on police video cameras and is making national news. It shows Inkster police pulling over Dent in his 2011 tan Cadillac near South River Park Drive and Inkster Drive shortly before 10 p.m. The two officers approach with their guns drawn. As Dent opens the door, they pull him out and shove him to the ground. Dent does not appear in the video to be resisting arrest. As he is on the ground, a police officer later identified as William Melendez has him in a choke hold, and is repeatedly pounding him on his head.  A second officer is attempting to handcuff him behind his back, but Dent has his right arm up, trying to protect his face and head against Melendez.  Another officer arrives and kicks him, and then another officer Tasers Dent in the thigh and stomach as he is handcuffed.  Dent, who has worked for Ford for 37 years, said he was hospitalized for two days for injuries to his face and head.



LINK

UPDATE: Additional video purports to show officer planting drugs.

Movie Reviews: Horrible Bosses 2, The Crusades Documentary

Horrible Bosses 2
directed by Sean Anders

If you liked the first movie then you may like this remake sequel. Virtually everything is the same only MORE and DUMBER. I could probably just stop writing right there, actually. But that wouldn't be very descriptive would it? Horrible Bosses 2 features tons of sex jokes, the normal levels of cleavage, dangerous misunderstandings with the police, shockingly inept protagonists, inadvertent racial insults, car chases and various double crosses. Some of this is occasionally funny. But generally this movie is more hit or miss than the previous film. I guess your enjoyment of this flick will depend on your mood and your tolerance of lowest common denominator jokes. What was transgressive or fresh in the first movie is just "been there, done that" in the second. I think I checked out mentally when the sex crazed dentist Julia Harris (Jennifer Anniston) revealed her familiarity with some very disgusting and filthy activities. But hey, to each their own. This film is horribly uneven. There are some (too few) very funny set pieces. But there are also plenty of scenes that didn't work too well. It reminded me of an aging boxer still trying to stick and move but missing his target and getting repeatedly tagged by a younger, quicker rival. Still, just like that old boxer, this film every now and again lands a belly blow that will leave you rolling on the floor (hopefully in laughter, not pain) This was definitely not a movie that needed to be seen in the theater so I'm glad I didn't spend the money to watch it there.

Having escaped prison by the skin of their teeth in the first movie, friends Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Dale (Charlie Day) have pooled their meager financial resources and their even less impressive brainpower to start up a shower caddy business. They've decided that it's time to go into business for themselves. I didn't really pick up on this in the first movie as much but the three men are heirs to the Three Stooges style slapstick comedy only without the constant physical confrontation. Dale is still a mouse of a man who's both faithful to and frightened of his wife. He consistently has the worst ideas of the trio. Kurt is possibly even dumber than Dale but doesn't realize it because he has tons more confidence and swagger. He's always looking for that woman who will let him "bend her over a barrel and show her the fifty states". Quiet and pensive Nick is who passes for brainpower in the group but obviously finds himself drawn in to his buddies' hijinks. His deadpan reactions, sarcastic questions and straight man timing are things I appreciated in this film. Now that I think about it Kurt and Dale have been dumbed down from the first movie. Their not so carefully thought out business plan goes awry. When their financial future teeters on the brink, because as Nick's imprisoned and embittered former boss Dave (Kevin Spacey) not so helpfully points out, the group lacks testicles and brains, the friends once again search out Muyerfuyer Jones (Jamie Foxx) for assistance. However the bumbling group messes up Jones' idea and winds up in a kidnapping situation initially similar to O'Henry's The Ransom of Red Chief. As I intimated, this movie walks the line between crude and dumb. This is not a film that requires you to use the more complex areas of your brain to enjoy it. In fact doing so will probably hinder any pleasure you might find. 

All in all it wasn't as funny as the first movie. Christoph Waltz, Jonathan Banks and Chris Pine also star. Comedian Keegan-Michael Key has a small role.
TRAILER



The Crusades
as shown on the History Channel

President Obama recently was attacked in some quarters for stating that Christians have their own history of religiously inspired intolerance, fanaticism and violence, most famously the Crusades. Of course as Professor Juan Cole pointed out, Christians in general and European Christians in particular have set some records when it comes to killing people for any number of reasons. Since killing people is in direct contravention to the teachings of Jesus Christ, Christians are hard pressed to defend killing and war. Of course needs must and as we live in a world that is not perfect, Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas codified the theory of the just war. President Obama's critics referenced this theory in arguing that that the Crusades were really wars of self-defense and thus morally ok. The truth, as always is somewhere in between and definitely depends on which side you are standing. It is true that the Western European Catholic Christians came to fight the Muslims because of stories and rumors of mistreatment of Christian pilgrims and residents in the Levant. The newly dominant Seljuk Turks were said to be less tolerant of Christian worship than had previously been the case. There was also a state of war between the expanding Muslim ruled areas and the declining Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire which was slowly losing its domains in Asia Minor. It is also true that the Pope and various European rulers were eager to be rid of what they saw as excessive numbers of warriors, who caused all sorts of havoc across Europe with their interminable bloody feuds, battles for land or thrones, and their general resistance to strong central states. Pope Urban rationalized that if he could not get rid of violence, why not redirect it towards the infidel? A crusade would reduce the surplus military population, possibly help unify Europe under papal rule and extend Latin, which is to say Catholic, authority in the East. It would also bring the sites of Christ's birth and death back into Christian hands. 

Crusader armies and mobs gathered, excited by the chance to expiate their sins and see Jerusalem. Along the way to the Middle East, some Crusaders decided that rather than wait until their destination to combat the enemies of Christ, they could do so in Europe. Jewish communities were attacked. Some were decimated while others were forced to convert.

The Byzantine Emperor who had written the Pope for assistance had in mind only the 11th century equivalent of Seal Team Six or the French Foreign Legion. He wanted a handful of tough guys/advisers who would lead and inspire his armies. He felt threatened and somewhat betrayed by thousands of armed fanatics showing up on his doorstep, led by men who were all too obviously interested in carving out their own dominions in lands being fought over by the Byzantines and Muslims. The Emperor forced the Crusader leaders to swear oaths of allegiance to him before turning them loose on his Muslim rivals. These oaths were only briefly honored. Fortunately for the Crusaders the Muslim leaders facing them initially were weak, divided, and had little knowledge of Western style war. Jerusalem fell to the European invaders in a sack which even by the callous standards of the era, was considered to be a war crime. Contemporary eyewitness accounts tell of mass rape and slaughter, mosques and synagogues burned down and streets literally running red with blood. The Crusaders killed Muslim, Christian and Jew alike. Conveniently forgetting their promises to the Byzantines, the Crusaders set up independent states in what is now Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. This set off a multi-century struggle back and forth between Christian and Muslim over the Holy Land which ultimately saw the European Christians defeated and expelled. 

The documentary covers the first three Crusades. Only the First Crusade saw a complete Christian victory. I thought the documentary should have covered the Fourth Crusade, in which the simmering hostility between Eastern and Western Christian finally boiled over, resulting in the sack of Constantinople by Crusader armies. This documentary gives a lot of time to the Muslim point of view which is usually not part of the Western narrative. That's fair I guess. But it's also fair to point out that the people who bemoan European Christian invasions of the Middle East and the associated barbarity and imperialism were often as quiet as church mice about the prior and contemporaneous Muslim invasions of North Africa, Spain and France and future Muslim invasions of Eastern Europe. By the time of the First Crusade Muslim invaders had ruled huge swaths of Spain for almost 400 years. In the big picture, very few people have clean hands, historically speaking. The re-enactments are nicely done.You get a surprisingly detailed examination of what it was like to live, eat, sleep, fight and die in a time before modern medicine and refrigeration. It is humbling to watch someone drive down a highway, stop and tell the viewer that one thousand years ago the battle of such-n-such took place right here. This documentary also details the various machinations, murders and backstabbing that went on among the Muslims as various leaders vied to unite the Muslim world. The one who briefly did, Saladin, gets a fair amount of analysis. The entire documentary is about three hours. It can be watched online.