The Dead South is a Canadian band whose music can best be described as a satirical and earnest take on American/Canadian/British folk, bluegrass and blues with some 90s style alternative grungey sounds added for seasoning. If you're someone who can enjoy both Mumford and Sons and Otis Taylor, you might be willing to explore The Dead South. I discovered the band by falling down a youtube rabbit hole that started with Otis Taylor, progressed thru Fairpoint Convention and ended with The Dead South. As mentioned, although they dress like stereotypical American Southerners circa 1935 or so, they are Canadian. I heard two songs that caused me to purchase the CD which featured them. Both songs are grim. One has some dark humor. The song "In Hell I'll be in Good Company" is about a wife murderer about to be hanged, who is happy that when he gets to hell he'll see his unfaithful wife again. The song "Banjo Odyssey" attracted some controversy that the band addressed on their Facebook page. The band said the song lyrics are about a consensual albeit forbidden relationship. The doomed(?) lovers are trying to escape. That explanation may have been the songwriter's intention but I didn't get that impression at all--definitely not the consensual part. See what you think.
I have held the opinion that not much good happens at 3 AM in White Castle parking lots. But of course I am not an Indiana circuit court judge so I am by definition not too smart. Judges, being much smarter than I, know that there is nothing wrong with getting drunk and starting or escalating fights with people with unknown capacities and sincere desires to put a hurting on someone. Three Indiana judges recently decided to demonstrate the wisdom, soberness and character that shows why we extend such deference to judges in general. After their show of probity all three judges were suspended from the bench. So I guess at least for a little while they won't be able to enjoy such perks as telling people to sit down and be quiet, having everyone stand up when they enter or leave the room, interrupting other professionals any time they feel like it, or lecturing grown men and women in tones dripping with condescension. Oh well. The judges’ plan, if there ever was one, was to enjoy a couple of drinks with their colleagues the night before a judicial conference in Indianapolis.
But by 3 a.m. the next morning, three Indiana circuit court judges, by way of a failed attempt to enter a strip club, were brawling with two strangers outside a White Castle in a drunken melee that ended with two of the judges shot and in critical condition in a hospital.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg recently threw his hat in the Presidential race. African-American NYT columnist Charles Blow wrote a column excoriating both Bloomberg for his stop-and-frisk policy and those people who supported him. Many self-identified otherwise liberal commenters responded negatively to Blow's column. They suggested openly and in code that they were willing to ignore the Fourth Amendment rights of Black men and boys in NYC because it made the white commenters feel safer. And anyway stop and frisk was good for Black people, regardless of what Black people seemed to think. It's probably important to remind people what it looks and sounds like when an armed agent of the state stops a citizen and attempts to harass or bully him solely because of the color of his skin. This being America, one doesn't have to wait long for such an example. In Indiana a suburban Indianapolis police officer decided that two Black men looked suspicious because they shopped at Nordstrom. Apparently Deputy Constable Daryl Jones doesn't think Black men should be stopping at Nordstrom. The officer is sending the message that he doesn't want Black men in that area. And given that this person had both a gun and a license from the state to use it, things could have gone very badly for the two Black men. Fortunately they are still alive and unharmed. Still, it is my hypothesis that the continual flight or fight responses engendered by hostile racist encounters, and the adrenaline and cortisol produced, likely play a role in the higher hypertension rates and earlier death rates experienced by Black men in America. Notice that Jones becomes hyper agitated when the men stand up for their rights. This leads me to believe that the real issue is that like a typical racist Jones believes that whiteness makes him always right.
Doctor Sleep is a thriller film based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, previously reviewed here. King's novel is a sequel to his previous novel The Shining. Doctor Sleep is also a thriller film that is a sequel to the Stanley Kubrick movie , The Shining, which was based on King's novel. King was not a fan of Kubrick's adaptation, and wasn't shy about stating so to any and all. King thought that Kubrick made some bad mistakes with King's story, perhaps deliberately. It could be why King spent the time and resources to produce his own television version of The Shining. There are nonetheless some iconic and truly frightening scares in Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, some of which were taken directly from King's novel, and some of which were not. Got all that? Good. I mention this to point out that Flanagan walked a fine line to adapt King's Doctor Sleep novel while exploring themes from The Shining novel that King thought Kubrick missed. Additionally Flanagan still gave shout outs to Kubrick's work. Occasionally the strain of juggling different demands and conflicting sources shows but two performances are so good, that people might well (ahem) overlook inconsistencies or problems. In The Shining, as a boy the psychically gifted Danny Torrance barely escaped being murdered by his father. His father Jack was possessed by one or more spirits inhabiting the Overlook Hotel. The Overlook was eager to kill Danny and take his power. Danny and his mother Wendy survived; Jack Torrance did not.
Sometimes I wish that instead of going into the increasingly unremunerative field of accounting based related information technology I had starting a polling business aimed at telling arrogant billionaires what they wanted to hear. Because the only reason that Michael Bloomberg could possibly think that he could become President is that he paid a lot of money to have someone tell him that he could win. Bloomberg apparently believes that Americans will be lining up to vote for a supercilious control freak with a stop-and-frisk fetish. If Bloomberg does officially enter the race and wind up on the debate stage, don't be surprised if his security detail makes a beeline to stop and frisk Senator Cory Booker. Never can be too sure you know.
Michael R. Bloomberg is actively preparing to enter the Democratic presidential primary and is expected to file paperwork this week designating himself as a candidate in at least one state with an early filing deadline, people briefed on Mr. Bloomberg’s plans said.
Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman, has been privately weighing a bid for the White House for weeks and has not yet made a final decision on whether to run, an adviser said. But in the first sign that he is seriously moving toward a campaign, Mr. Bloomberg has dispatched staffers to Alabama to gather signatures to qualify for the primary there. Though Alabama does not hold an early primary, it has a Friday deadline for candidates to formally enter the race.
The city of Detroit, my hometown, can be akin to the Wild Wild West when it comes to basic things such as the buying, selling, renting, and maintaining of property. Local ordinances and state laws tend to be biased towards landlords and/or the wealthy. Because Detroit is physically a huge place, six times larger than Manhattan, twice as large as Brooklyn, and about one and half times the size of Boston, the relevant regulators lack the time or resources (or often the interest) to catch enough bad actors to enforce compliance. As drivers know, the mere knowledge that police whom you see and don't see are occasionally watching you can "convince" you to travel at or around the posted speed limits. But if people knew that police generally weren't watching or could only give $5 tickets when they caught someone doing 95mph, then more and more people would speed. Many Black Detroit homeowners are caught in a vicious cycle. They weren't earning a lot thanks to job market discrimination. Banks also discriminated against Blacks by trapping them into mortgages with higher interest and fees than their credit scores justified. This left them with less money available to repair their homes or ride out job loss or medical emergencies. Making matters worse the City of Detroit maintained very high property taxes to try to make up for white flight and increasingly black flight. When downturns occurred many Detroiters ended up losing their homes and had to become renters. Many then became tenants of people like Michael Kelly. Darlene Spells let out an exaggerated sigh as her son Corey peeled away the black tarp lining the front wall of the living room. Behind the plastic, where one would typically expect some sort of plaster sheeting, thin slats of wood lay stacked like rotting Lincoln Logs. "Corey, show the bathroom too!" Spells directed from her bed in the room next door. Upstairs, more slats of wood peeked out below the shower head. The real damage, however, was only really understood when standing in the downstairs kitchen, where a yellow stain metastasized across the wood-fiber ceiling. The leak had been going on for years, she said.
