Michigan Apples

Depending on which survey you happen to believe Michigan is consistently the state with the second or third largest crop of apples each year. The crop is coming soon. I like apples but even more than apples I like what apples portend: cooler weather, women in sweaters, football and fall. Those all kind of go together in my head. Apples also mean that there will be lots of apple pies, apple fritters, apple sauces and all sorts of other treats derived from that fruit. There are thousands of different kinds of apples. They don't all exist in Michigan but there are enough different Michigan varieties to keep a fan of this fruit well satisfied for the next three months as fall arrives, with its lower temperatures and overcast skies. Apple lovers won't have to wait much longer to sink their teeth into their favorite fruit: This year's Michigan apple harvest is ahead of schedule, with certain varieties' predicted peak harvest dates falling anywhere from a few days to an entire week ahead of normal. 

According to Michigan State University Extension, data collected from around the state suggests the apple harvest will be significantly early for certain varieties in some parts of Michigan, but that the cropload will be 65 percent of normal due to frost damage earlier in the year.  "As always, the weather seems to be unusual each year and 2017 was no different," MSU Extension posted in an article predicting apple harvest dates late last month. 

MacIntosh apples, for example, are 10 to 11 days ahead of normal in some parts of the state, and, in general, a few days ahead of the 2016 harvest. Meanwhile, peak harvest for Red Delicious apples is predicted to range from one to eight days ahead of normal, depending on what region they are in.
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Movie Reviews: Hacksaw Ridge

Hacksaw Ridge
directed by Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson may hold ugly opinions or beliefs that you don't like. He may occasionally make even uglier statements when he is drunk or upset. But since I don't know the man personally that doesn't impact my enjoyment of his film work. Maybe I would feel differently if I was the real life target of one of his volcanic bigoted tirades. But I haven't been. Sometimes people who have great skills aren't necessarily very nice people. Sometimes very nice people are utterly incompetent artists. It's just the way it is. This is a roundabout way of saying that I think this film serves as Gibson's re-entry into Hollywood royalty. It has A- list stars, excellent cinematography and impressive writing/storytelling. It helps that this is based on a true story, something of a tearjerker. Gibson pulls out all the stops to wring every bit of emotion out of the viewer. I think it works. He also brings his penchant for blood and martyrdom to the forefront but as this is a war movie, that makes sense. This is not a war movie like the old 50s and 60s war movies where someone would get hit and fall down. 

Maybe in the late 60s or 70s we'd see a splash of red. No. This is a post-Saving Private Ryan war movie. Gibson does his best, and his best is pretty damn good, to bring across the horror, carnage and randomness of war.  There is the danger of become too inured to such graphic violence but of course no matter how horrible these images are they are nothing compared to the reality of war. I don't think that you can watch this film and come away thinking that war is anything less than an obscenity to be avoided at almost any cost.

Book Reviews: Someone is Bleeding

Someone is Bleeding
by Richard Matheson

This is Richard Matheson's earliest story. It is very different from his sci-fi or horror work. It's a short story that I read in the "Noir" collection. I'm not sure if this was ever an American film but it's something that screams out to be made into a movie. The characters aren't super strong but there is a constant feeling that something isn't quite right. I guess you could call this American noir writing. Though the story is only 154 pages Matheson takes his sweet time developing the plot and themes. He spends a lot of time on description and dialogue. He doesn't explain every little thing. Although the story takes place in sunny California a lot of the action takes place at night. Given some of the dark deeds and aberrant sexuality this contrast between light and darkness works. There's a very strong Chinatown vibe to this story, if that comparison works for you. This story is the spiritual Godfather to works such as Chinatown and Blue Velvet. A psychologically and/or morally damaged hero risks it all to save a strange beautiful woman who may not be worth the effort. In post WW2 California a veteran, journalism grad and writer named David Newton is taking in the sun on the beach when he meets a remarkably curvy blonde woman named Peggy Ann Lister. Well David is not the sort of fellow to let good things get away from him if he can help it. Despite the fact that Peggy seems only marginally interested in David, David holds up his side of the conversation well enough to pique what seems to be something close to attraction in Peggy.

It's hard to tell what Peggy really thinks though because for reasons which don't need to be disclosed here Peggy has a profound distrust of the entire male gender. And once she knows David a little better she's not averse to telling him that even he is not really within her circle of trust. David flips back and forth between wanting to tell Peggy off and storm away from her and persist to break through her defenses to show her that he is that one in a million good guy who will never hurt her or make her do anything she doesn't want to do.

Trans Community, Consent and Scapegoating

Recently a comedian named Lil Duval appeared on a radio show and made a clearly hyberbolic/comedic threat of violence against any transperson who tricked him into sex/intimacy. There was an immediate backlash from some members of the trans community as well as from some liberal people who often appear to have a stick up their behind concerning heterosexuality, which they never tire of labeling as hegemonic or toxic or problematic or any of the other popular academic circle insults. I wouldn't really care at all about what amounts to a catfight but for the fact that both NBC news and the New York Times seized this opportunity to insult the black community, or to be precise, black heterosexual men, as violence prone, hypermasculine, and backwards when it comes to trans issues.

NBC, the New York Times and a fair number of people yelling at Lil Duval used black brute stereotypes straight from Birth of A Nation. They just repurposed them for a liberal agenda.

But when DJ Envy asked Lil Duval what he would do if a woman he had sex with later said she was transgender, he responded, “This might sound messed up and I don’t care: She dying.” The hosts quickly told him that killing a transgender person was a hate crime and that he could not do that. But Lil Duval continued to make jokes and said it was about manipulation and taking away his choice. Charlamagne Tha God, the show’s most popular host, agreed with that point, saying that by not disclosing she is transgender, a woman is “taking away a person’s power of choice,” and he added that “you should go to jail or something.” In a statement to The New York Times released through his publicist on Saturday, Charlamagne Tha God denounced all prejudice and hate crimes, emphasizing that he wholeheartedly believed that violence against transgender people was wrong. 

“Nobody should be killed just for existing,” he said. What needed to be discussed further, he added, was whether transgender people should disclose their gender identities to sexual partners. “To me, anytime you take away someone’s power of choice, it’s criminal,” he said. “Let me decide for myself if this is what I want. But if a trans person doesn’t disclose until after sexual acts have occurred, they shouldn’t be killed for it.”

I don't give a flying fig what people do in private. Not my business. If you want to cut off your male organs, get surgery and ingest/inject chemicals to attempt to give yourself a feminine appearance, that's you. If you change your name from a masculine one to a feminine one and demand to be addressed by the feminine name, I will call you by your new name. If you want to walk or talk like your silly stereotype of what a woman walks or talks like, fine. Yawn.

Trump Supporter, Foreigners and Housing Discrimination

The libertarian or traditionalist conservative would say that this is a white man's country that a man ought to have the right to do as he pleases with his own property. Although that is indeed an important value there are other values and goals which society has decided are equally important or even more important than the right to control your own property in every aspect. One of those values is anti-discrimination. 

There are limits on how the state or even private entities can treat you based on immutable characteristics such as your race, age, sex, nationality and occasionally even religion or sexuality or sexual identity. The law has been trending that way for at least the past seventy years or so. Why? Because there are unfortunately a lot of people who, given half a chance, would indeed discriminate against their fellow Americans or others based on some or all of the traits I just mentioned. One such man is Iraq war vet and former shady used car dealer, James Prater, a Mason, Michigan resident who has decided to put his house up for sale. There's just one caveat. Mr. Prater doesn't want to sell to anyone who is not a true blue American. Apparently he has a special dislike for people of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent. But rather than leave it up to the individual to figure out if they were sufficiently non-Middle Eastern/South Asian Prater decided to make it easy for everyone by stating "No foreigners". Nice and simple.

EMU Football Poster

Sometimes ideas are better in the concept phase then they are in the execution and delivery phase. It happens. No big deal. You can't necessarily figure out ahead of time how everyone will react and respond to your idea, particularly if you are trying to sell something. Everyone has different initial reactions to ideas and visual displays. If you are a member of the Eastern Michigan Hurons football team posing for a poster touting your upcoming fall schedule you probably want to channel the pride and fury of such former EMU (and NFL) football players such as John Banaszak, Charlie Batch, Vashone Adams, T.J. Laing,  and Darius Jackson among others. You want to impress and excite with your passion and strength. You want to get everyone fired up for the season! You want people to come see you do your thing on the field as you layeth the smackdown on your opponents.
Well.

Movie Reviews: Detroit

Detroit

directed by Kathyrn Bigelow

The 1967 Detroit riot or rebellion started less than a mile from where I would later grow up. In separate incidents during this time both of my parents were shot at by police, soldiers and/or rioters. My mother, a paternal uncle and my paternal grandfather were nearly killed by police shooting at the car my grandfather was driving while he was trying to get my mother safely home. A bullet missed my mother and left a scar on my uncle's shin. Another paternal aunt would later regale me with stories of the National Guardsmen/Army troops riding in armored vehicles shouting racial slurs at black teens and threatening to shoot them. And of course many older uncles and second cousins would from time to time over the years mention the repressive and disgusting behavior of the police back in what I came to think of as the bad old days. I mention all this to say that although I wasn't on the scene or even yet thought of when the riot took place I feel as if I had a very personal stake in what was going on. Some of the buildings that were part of my panorama growing up were the same buildings that were seen on the newsreels of the events in 1967. People died in part so that I could walk freely in my city and succeed to the best of my God given abilities instead of being assaulted by police or trapped in a dead end racially segregated job. So I was intrigued to see what a strong talented director like Bigelow would do with this story. Would she mess it up? Would she get down to the nitty gritty? Would she confirm ugly stereotypes about whites working with "black" stories and themes?

Unfortunately I would have to say that as a storyteller Bigelow missed the boat here. Technically the movie is superb. The camera work, lighting, cinematography, settings and look of the film are all top notch, with one or two minor complaints I'll mention in a moment. Bigelow is a master (mistress?) of her craft and shows it here. But the narrative is too sharply focused on the incidents at the Algiers Motel. The Algiers Motel (which has since been torn down) was a place that was a sort of no-tell motel. People often went there to commit adultery. Some prostitutes worked that area.