Titus Andronicus
by William Shakespeare
Sex and gore that would make Tarantino squeamish
You can make an argument that there is very little that is new under the sun. Shakespeare's play Titus Andronicus would be a good exhibit for that point of view. At various times creative artists as disparate as Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Quentin Tarantino, Rob Zombie, Robert Bloch, Tom Six, Marilyn Manson, Lady Gaga, and Richard Laymon have been accused of playing to the cheap seats, of marketing cheap sex and grotesque violence for no other reason than to shock people. Some of those accusations are true. Some of them are not. But certainly Titus Andronicus is a rebuke to those who believe that humans have radically changed over the centuries or to those who still hold that Shakespeare only wrote high minded comedies/tragedies designed to uplift the human spirit. Shakespeare could be as nasty and dirty as any modern splatterpunk novelist. This play was apparently when he wanted to be way out there. Titus Andronicus was so out of the ordinary for Shakespeare that for the longest time some scholars refused to believe that he wrote it. Others argued that everything was so ridiculously over the top that Shakespeare meant this to be a comedy.
If I recall correctly there isn't any incest or homosexual activity in Titus Andronicus, but Shakespeare includes almost every other taboo in the play, his first tragedy. There's adultery, murder, rape, lots of mutilation, cannibalism, and filicide. There's also a big scary black man who does evil for evil's sake and makes a (white) Queen his willing sex slave. There's a fair amount of racism, often portrayed uncritically. This is a part of Shakespeare's contribution to the Western canon as much as Hamlet or The Tempest. Almost no one in the play is likable. Anyone who is good seems to get it in the neck almost immediately. The story feels modern. It is set in pre-Christian times or at least semi-Christian times. None of the characters are familiar with the Golden Rule or wish to turn the other cheek. The highest values in Titus Andronicus are not to love thy neighbor as thyself and return good for evil but rather to unquestionably follow the orders of your family head and avenge yourself sevenfold upon any who assail you.
Micmacs
directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Micmacs is a French film. Jean-Pierre Jeunet also directed Amelie, reviewed here. English subtitles are available. I haven't heard or spoken French in a very long time so movies like this are always fun for me to watch. I understand less and less of French as time passes by but I still enjoy occasionally turning off the subtitles to see how much I can comprehend. Not much as it turned out. Still whether you speak French fluently or have to watch each and every subtitle this was a good movie to watch. Unlike with Amelie the romantic theme in Micmacs is not central to the movie. You might even say it's an afterthought. The primary similarity between Micmacs and Amelie is the color palette which simultaneously invokes surrealistic imaginings and hyperrealisism. Jeunet evidently used digital color manipulation to create a Paris that never existed but still feels all too real. Micmacs provides a wealth of visual riches that draw in the viewer. This film is hypnotic. You can get lost just watching the camera linger on a particular piece of architecture. This is a great film to watch on a snowy or rainy day when you're just going to snuggle on the couch.
It's well cast and acted even if the writing is occasionally a bit suspect. Micmacs is a very optimistic film, despite the subject matter. If you are the sort of person who believes that most people are good and that it's all going to work out in the end then you will probably enjoy this movie. And even if you are a cynic the film may still make you smile. The movie is plot driven not character driven. The protagonist and his friends are all just there to move the story, nothing more. I laughed at the lead character but I never really felt super sympathetic towards him. So this movie is not as memorable as Amelie. But the visuals and music may make up for that.
I want you to imagine any US general or politician saying that Nazi Gestapo/SD head Reinhard Heydrich, a prime architect of the Holocaust, was "a principled man and skilled violinist who gave up a promising career in the performing arts to serve his country with honor and dedication. Now we may disagree with his principles but that was a long time ago. Things were different then. We shouldn't judge people by today's standards. Heydrich made the decision to soldier for his country. And that's not something to be lightly dismissed".
Such a statement by anyone with anything to lose would probably not be made during normal times because the statement is so profoundly callous and ignorant about the evil that Heydrich committed. But we are not in normal times, as Trump Chief of Staff General Kelly recently demonstrated.
“I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man,” Kelly told Ingraham. “He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”
“I think we make a mistake, though, and as a society and certainly as, as individuals, when we take what is today accepted as right and wrong and go back 100, 200, 300 years or more and say what those, you know, what Christopher Columbus did was wrong,” he said. “You know, 500 years later, it’s inconceivable to me that you would take what we think now and apply it back then.LINK
You tried so hard to kill me, woman it just was not my time.
You put poison in my coffee, instead of milk or cream.
You put poison in my coffee, instead of milk or cream.
You bout the evilest woman, that I ever seen.
You mixed my drink with a can of Red Devil lye.
You mixed my drink with a can of Red Devil lye.
Then you sat down, watching me, hopin that I might die
Howling Wolf "Commit A Crime"
I don't believe in arranged weddings though I work with some people who do. I don't believe in marrying your relatives either although again I have worked with people who surely must have been the result of such couplings. If I were unfortunate enough to be raised in a culture where both of those things were normal I guess I would have to run away to the big city or stand my ground and refuse to marry my cousin/aunt/half-sister. What I probably wouldn't do is agree to the marriage long enough to calm the suspicions of my family/in-laws so that I could plot a massacre that would make Walder Frey quail at my ruthlessness. Pakistani citizen Aasia Bibi does not share my qualms. The 21 year old woman already had a man, one Shahid Lasari. Apparently they were happily doing their thing together (though given the importance placed on female virginity at marriage in some circles it's unclear as what exactly the unmarried couple was doing) What is clear is that Bibi's family had marriage plans for her and wasn't going to take no for an answer any longer. And those plans definitely didn't include Lasari. Well Bibi wasn't going to sit still for that kind of stuff, thank you very much. She took matters into her own hands.
A 21-year-old Pakistani woman, unhappy in her new arranged marriage, is charged with murder after poisoning her husband's milk that some two dozen members of his extended family later drank, resulting in 17 deaths, according to police. The alleged incident took place in a rural village near the city of Multan in the eastern Punjab Province.
You may remember Debra Devi from the interview she previously did here. Now the author, former magazine editor and self-taught Jersey City based professional musician has released a 6 song EP (on the digital release the sixth song is a live version) entitled Wild Little Girl. I believe that this is her second official release after Get Free. This was all in all a good release. It had one song I really liked. The remaining balance was quite good all things considered. This is an EP. None of the songs are longer than five minutes.
So just like a collection of short stories, if there's something that's not really your particular cup of tea just wait a while because you can be certain that something better is coming up shortly. On the other hand there were at least two songs that I wished had gone on for a little longer. Maybe that will happen on the next release. Although blues is ultimately at the foundation of a lot of the music that Devi creates, for this installment of her creative output she is blues based but not blues bound. The music here put me in mind of The Black Crowes, Prince, and Little Feat. Vocally Devi is a dead ringer for Sheryl Crow. I happen to like Crow's voice so for me this was a very good thing. Perhaps at some point in the future people will be saying that Crow's voice is a dead ringer for Devi's. Time will tell. If I had to classify Devi's voice I'd guess she was an alto. What's she's not is a belter. Generally she has arranged the songs to recognize this fact.
It seems as if Thursday night football is almost unwatchable. I don't know why the NFL insists on having Thursday night games anyway. It doesn't seem fair to the players involved to have a short week to prepare to engage in such a brutal contest. An incident in the most recent Thursday game reminded me of football's unchangeable savagery. Miami Dolphins linebacker Kiki Alonso put a hit on Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco that knocked Flacco out of the game and at least into the middle of next week. Flacco had to have stitches and is in concussion protocol. Alonso was penalized for unnecessary roughness, but wasn't ejected from the game. When this post was written, the NFL had not decided if Alonso would be suspended.
The NFL has tried to cut down on helmet to helmet contact. It has tried to reduce the hits that quarterbacks take. It has, compared to the days of the 70s and 80s, tried to limit the ways in which defenders can hit offensive players. We know more about the human body than we did in those days. And people want to see scoring. When there's no scoring people don't watch the game. That's the fear anyway.
But all the same you can not take young muscular men between 200 and 400 pounds and repeatedly crash them into each other at high speeds without someone getting hurt. It can't be done. And as other players have pointed out, when you step on that field, you are subject to getting hit--like everyone else. Football players are trained to play until the whistle. If they don't they won't be employed for very long. I'm not sure that by the rules of the game Alonzo's hit was "dirty" but it was certainly painful. And it was questionable enough for Flacco's teammates and coaches to start quite a ruckus. Once a quarterback starts to slide he's really not supposed to be hit. That's kind of the whole point of sliding. Watch below and sound off..
Hard Magic
by Larry Correia
I enjoyed this book. I think I enjoyed it more because it was written in the third person. Therefore it wasn't really a given, as most first person narrated books tend to be, that the protagonist survives. In some aspects Hard Magic is miles apart from Correia's Monster Hunter books and in others it's pretty similar. A hero of large size and rough demeanor with a complicated family past joins a band of not so lovable losers, misfits and outright criminals who are nonetheless tasked to save the world. This story also put me in mind of the X-Men Professor X: Magneto conflict as well as the classic Doc Savage pulp novels. This book took me a little longer to read than usual. At 600 pages, Hard Magic isn't a quick read. But mostly it took me longer to read because my lunch hour seems to keep shrinking. In a perfect world I would have finished this book in about two weeks.
Hard Magic imagines a world where at some point in the 19th century magic or as people call it "power" became a reality. The book is set in the 1930s. Correia doesn't just dump information on the reader. It takes a while to put everything together. The reader discovers things in time, not all at once. As clues Correia has quotes from notable 19th and 20th century personages opening each chapter. They all explain how magic has changed their life and plans or those of other people for better, or often worse. Some populations have more magic users than others only because different cultures reacted differently to magic. Other people combine both inborn magic and external use of magic. Some people are able to use magic: cast spells and make enchanted items. Other people were born with magic powers. These people were called Actives. And a few can do both. There are all sorts of different Actives. These include but are certainly not limited to:
