Part One: “Boot the Braids” Truth Tour makes a splash along the East Coast!
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Tuesday, July 09, 2019
Part One: “Boot the Braids” Truth Tour makes a splash along the East Coast! Coalition of Immokalee Workers
The “Cold” Civil War Rages In America-In The Third Year Of The Torquemada (Oops!) Trump Regime- Immigrants, Trans-genders, DACAs, TPSers, Media People, Leftists, Hell, Liberals Know Your Constitutional Rights-It May Save Your Life
The “Cold” Civil War Rages In America-In The Third Year Of The Torquemada (Oops!) Trump Regime- Immigrants, Trans-genders, DACAs, TPSers, Media People, Leftists, Hell, Liberals Know Your Constitutional Rights-It May Save Your Life
By Frank Jackman
Over the first year of the Trump regime as this massive control freak regime has plundered right after right, made old Hobbes’ “life is short, brutish and nasty” idea seem all too true for a vast swath of people residing in America (and not just America either) I have startled many of my friends, radical and liberal alike. Reason? For almost all of my long adult life I have been as likely to call, one way or another, for the overthrow of the government as not. This Republic if you like for a much more equitable society than provided under it aegis. This year I have been as they say in media-speak “walking that notion back a bit.” Obviously even if you only get your news from social media or twitter feeds there have been gigantic attempts by Trump, his cronies and his allies in Congress to radically limit and cut back many of the things we have come to see as our rights in ordinary course of the business of daily life. This year I have expressed deep concerns about the fate of the Republic and what those in charge these days are hell-bend of trying to put over our eyes.
Hey, I like the idea, an idea that was not really challenged even by the likes of Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes in their respective times that I did not have to watch my back every time I made a political move. Now maybe just every move. This assault, this conscious assault on the lives and prospects of immigrants, DACAs, TPSers. Trans-genders, blacks, anti-fascists, Medicaid recipients, the poor, the outspoken media, uppity liberals, rash leftist radicals and many others has me wondering what protections we can count on, use to try to protect ourselves from the onslaught.
I, unlike some others, have not Cassandra-cried about the incipient fascist regime in Washington. If we were at that jackboot stage I would not be writing, and the reader would not be reading, this screed. Make no mistake about that. However there is no longer a question in my mind that the “cold” civil war that has been brewing beneath the surface of American society for the past decade or more has been ratchetted up many notches. Aside from preparing politically for that clash we should also be aware, much more aware than in the past, about our rights as we are confronted more and more by a hostile government, its hangers-on and the agents who carry out its mandates.
I have been brushing up on my own rights and had come across a small pamphlet put out by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a good source for such information in these times. I have placed that information below.
As the ACLU disclaimer states this information is basic, should be checked periodically for updating especially the way the federal courts up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court have staked the deck against us of late. In any case these days if you are in legal difficulties you best have a good lawyer. The other side, the government has infinite resources, so you better get your best legal help available even if it cost some serious dough which tends to be the case these days with the way the judicial system works.
Most importantly when confronted by any governmental agents from the locals to the F.B.I. be cool, be very cool.
Monday, July 08, 2019
When Marvel Comics Ruled The Comic Universe Bringing Super-Heros To Shake, Rattle And Roll Our Placid Lives-Chris Hemsworth’s “Thor: Ragnorak” (2017)-A Film Review
When Marvel Comics Ruled
The Comic Universe Bringing Super-Heros To Shake, Rattle And Roll Our Placid
Lives-Chris Hemsworth’s “Thor: Ragnorak” (2017)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Sarah Lemoyne
Thor: Ragnorak, starring
Chris Hemsworth, Cate Blanchett, Anthony Hopkins, Jeff Goldblum and assorted other
crazies who wanted to cash in on the comic book cum film gravy train playing a
cast of characters well known in Marvel Comic Studios world, 2017
I promised Greg Green
our well-thought of site manager that I would not linger on and on about how I
got the assignment for this review of the third leg of this Marvel Comics Thor:
Ragnorak saga since I had what he considered, and apparently what the Ed Board
considered as well, my over-the-top discussion of how I was juked out of my
original assignment to do a six-film Hammer Productions set of reviews of psychological
thrillers from the 1950s done by that low-overhead operation at the behest of
Columbia Picture. All set including having already had two parts published when
one wizened senile old has-been Sam Lowell waylaid me with some desperate story
to Greg about how in some previous time, and maybe another planet, he had done
a film noir series put out by this cheapjack outfit working out of England back
in the 1950s and in the interest of so-called completeness he should do the
series-including a re-write of the two that I had already had published to
create some controversy and add some spice to his viewpoint. Naturally since
Sam, according to Will Bradley, I was not here at the time and there is
something of a gag order around the subject, had been the decisive vote to oust
the long-time previous manager and replace him with Greg he caved in. In my
fury after further consultation with a knowledgeable fellow writer I confronted
Greg and grabbed a nice assignment doing a younger person’s take on the Star War saga package with “first dibs”
for the same reason on the Marvel/DC studios’ collective of film super-heroes
as they came out. I grabbed this one since it seemed kind of interesting and
Thor, Chris Hemsworth, is by any standard a hunk and kind of interesting in a
low- ball kind of way. Since I have been told by sources close to Sam Lowell
that he has some kind of feeble reply to my discussion of his raw tactics in
that first Star Wars review in the works I need go no further and await his
sullen words.
The beauty of this Thor
series is that it is all about family, about who should be the head guy, the
king or some other titled person when the old man, Odin, he of Viking lore fame
and among the top dog gods if you think about where he stood in the firmament
passes from the scene. Let’s face it though even gods, non-Christian gods who I
think are considered eternal, have to leave the scene, have to pass on
especially a crippled old man and who was a little senile too from what I could
see goes beyond the pale-passes to Valhalla or wherever they go when time is no
more. That succession is what they call it is what sets this whole saga afloat and
although we already have been told in the previous episodes that Odin, for
whatever perverse reasons, doesn’t think Thor is ready for prime time
dull-witted Thor keeps thinking someday he will be the max daddy of Asgard.
Personally, I think Odin
has Thor written off as just another hired gun (maybe hired hammer is better
although I am right now loathed to use that word under any circumstances since
I am still pissed off at that weasel Sam Lowell for dong me out of that prestigious
Hammer Productions assignment), a set of strong biceps and all but a little
weak in the smarts department, probably can’t hold the throne except by using
that fucking mallet over the latest evil guy’s head. But Thor is blood and
bloodlines in the real world and Valhalla count for a lot in monarchies which
fortunately we in America dumped a couple of centuries ago-and good riddance. Then
there is sullen Loki, an orphan as we finally find out who is actually smarter
than Thor, as are about half the denizens of Asgard but who is so obsessed with
beating Thor and being the head honcho that like a lot of guys, gals too these
days, he lost his bearings, made some pretty bad decisions the worse being trying
to go man a mano with brawny Thor whose pea-brain might not hold up come decision-making
time but those 10,000 hours working out in the exercise yard carrying heavy
rocks up hills really do give the dude a physical advantage. So that is the family
part and if I don’t mention much about sex or love or stuff that young guys
would usually be crazy to do something about especially with a fox like Natalie
Portman around in previous episodes that is the nature of these pre-teen, teen,
wannabe teen again male-centric plots. Now we have ham-handed Hela, played by Cate
Blanchett who is also we find out from out of nowhere family, Thor’s bitch of a
sister pardon my language, but is so power-crazed, such a junkie, no way can
she take the throne or get within fifty miles of said room.
The family part is key
but there is no reason on this good green earth to even produce one Marvel/DC
film if you don’t have good guys battling the forces of evil in America, on
Earth, in the Galaxy, damn the universe if it comes right down to it. Thus we
are led through this film, this endless film watching the final battle brew
between Thor and his sullen allies and whoever has universe control on their minds-
and will fight to the death over it. Which of course is what fills time. I
still for the life of me cannot figure out why Thor and fellow super-hero (on
his good days when he is off the drugs and doing his twelve-step program) were
going mano a mano with each other except as action filler. Be that as it may we
know two things from a close watching of
this film, actually of the closing credits, the bad guy, the Grandmaster, the
evil genius here, but his name could have been legion in the bad guy book having
messed with the gods is going down, going down hard and don’t feign shock when
part four of this now weak-kneed saga hits the screen in the next couple of years.
[I think I will take a
leaf out of Sam Lowell’s book and do a review of the first two sagas reviewed
by Will Bradley purely in the interest of completeness.]
The Ghost Of Lawrence Landon-A Si Landon Story-With Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart In Mind
The Ghost Of Lawrence Landon-A Si Landon Story-With Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart In Mind
[The Pete Markin mentioned in the sketch below and in a previous one about Delores Landon, Lawrence Landon’s wife and Si’s mother, is the late Peter Paul Markin who despite a lot of serious work as a journalist back in the early 1970s fell off the edge of the world down south of the border and fell down shot dead with a couple of slugs in some desolate back alley in Sonora after a busted drug deal as far as anybody in America was able to find out (after being seriously warned off the case by the Federales and some guys who looked like they ate gorillas for breakfast). The Peter Markin who moderates this site is a pseudonym for a guy, Frank Jackman, who along with Si Landon, Jack Callahan, Frankie Riley, Josh Breslin and a bunch of other guys knew Markin in the old growing up days and has taken the pseudonym in honor of his fallen comrade who before his untimely end had taught him a lot about the world and its ways, quite a lot. “Peter Paul Markin”]
Memory floods. Memory flows unstaunched down to the endless sea of time. Some people shut off that memory flow to preserve their sanity others, others like Si Landon from the old corner boy Acre neighborhood in North Adamsville make it their business, go a long way out of their way to make it their business to remember, to be known among their circle as great rememberers. Si Landon had recently had occasion to test that theory out in a sort of roundabout way. He had been driven to remember one set of memories and that exploded another set in his face almost by happenstance.
The whole episode had started when due to irreconcilable differences with his third wife, Maria, he had been given “the boot,” had been given his walking papers by her after almost a decade together. We will not get bogged down with the particulars of the causes for the separation except to say that Maria’s complaints were centered on Si’s increased moodiness and distance (that was Maria’s polite way, as was her way, of putting the matter) as well as her own need to “find herself”. The long and short of the situation was that both had agreed that “rolling stone” Si would leave the house they had shared for the previous decade. He wound up for several months staying at various friends’ places and in a sublet from a friend’s daughter before he realized that he needed some rootedness, some familiar surroundings now that he was alone again with only his thoughts and memories.
One tough “exiled” day, that was the way Si described his various experiences since the breakup with Maria he had an epiphany which led to his decision to head back to the old neighborhood after an almost fifty year absence. After a certain amount of searching he was able to find a condo for rent (he was not ready to seek a permanent condo-type situation or quite sure that he was up for that experience since he had spent the previous forty or so years in single family housing so a rental was testing the waters). The condo was located a couple of blocks from his growing up family tumbled down shack of a house in a school which had been closed when the demographics in the area changed and converted to the condo complex. Although he had not gone to school there since his family had moved back into his mother’s old neighborhood when he was in junior high school from “the projects” school across town three of his four younger brothers (no sisters to his mother’s dismay) had gone there and that memory had helped determine his move to location.
He had strong recollections of his brothers’ time there and that was a source of some solace once he got settled in. Then a couple of days after that moving in he noticed in the front foyer that the developers of the place had kept some of the historic aspects of the place by keeping a series of graduating class photographs on one wall. On another was the 1925 announcement in the North Adamsville Gazette of the opening of the school. That hard fact triggered a sudden re-emergent long suppressed fear in Si once he realized that that 1925 date meant that his mother had also gone to school there something that he probably know way back when but had forgotten about. Sure enough looking at those old graduating class photos there was Delores Landon (nee Riley) sitting in the front row. All the battles from early childhood until just a few years before her death came rushing back into his head. [Their relationship as described in a previous sketch had consisted of longer and longer periods of withdrawal after recrimination until there was a point of no turning back reflected in the fact that Si had not even attended his mother’s funeral for a lot of reasons but that one primarily.-Markin] One late night when he could not get to sleep a couple of weeks after he had moved in Si thought he heard his mother’s voice calling out to him from the foyer that he would never amount to anything her favorite taunting mantra foe him whenever he got in trouble. Si freaked out over the idea that he would have to re-fight all the old memory battles. Damn. (Si by the way turned out to have been a better than average lawyer so he put paid to that eternal standard Delores notion.)
No question the dominant force in the Landon household, the five surly boys household, was one Delores Landon. That sad fact was no accident, or if it was accident it was so by virtue of the circumstances which befell Delores Riley and Si’s father, Lawrence Landon. Delores and Lawrence had met through the contingencies of World War II when Lawrence Landon had been stationed before being discharged from the Marines at the famous Riverdale Naval Depot, a place which had earned its fame then for producing something like one troop transport vessel per day on those manic twenty-four-even shifts throughout the war. Delores had worked in an office in the complex doing her bit for the war effort. They had met at a USO dance one Friday night and the rest was history for the next forty or so years until he passed away at 65. Part of that history was the production of a crop of five boys, five hungry boys as it turned out led by Si. The other part was that Lawrence had originally come from the south, had been born and raised in coal country, in Harlan County down in Kentucky in the heart of “white trash” poor Appalachia. Before the Marines broke the string he had been the latest in about five generations of Landons to work the coal mines.
Coming and staying in the Boston area with nothing but a tenth grade education and useless coalmining skills meant that Lawrence was always scrabbling for last hired, first fired work. It also meant that scrambling to do his best as a father to provide for his own that he was a very distant figure in the day to day Landon household which in practice meant that Si was from an early age the “surrogate” father a fate which almost destroyed him before he finally left the family house. It also meant that beyond the distant figure of his father he also knew next to nothing about him. Except, and this was a big except, Lawrence Landon never ever sided with Si against his mother whether she was right or wrong in whatever accusations she made against him. Tough work, tough work indeed although he never was as bitter against his father as he had been against Delores. (A lot of what Si would learn about his father would only come after Lawrence had passed on from his youngest brother Kenneth who made serious effort to try and understand what his father had gone through. So Kenneth had known, which will become important in a minute, that his father had been called “the Sheik” by his fellow Marines for his abilities with the women what with his soft Southern accent and black hair and eyes. Had known as well that beyond a young coal-miner’s skills he had some talent as a musician, as a better than average guitar player and singer who was locally known in the Saturday night “red barn” circuit throughout Appalachian Kentucky for his prowess in song and with the girls along with his band The Hills and Hollows Boys.)
That is perhaps why when Si was old enough and thoughtful enough to know better he recognized that Lawrence had done the best he could with what he had to offer. It had been a hard lesson to learn even with some leeway. So it was no accident that a few weeks after Si’s strange nocturnal “encounter” with his mother (being a man of science he had eventually dismissed, or half dismissed that “voice” as just some gusts of wind coming from outside his windows) he had an “encounter” with the ghost of his father. Si had for many years, going back to his college days been something of a folk music aficionado. Had breathed in the folk minute that passed through the world starting in the very early 1960s.
For some thirty years previously well after the folk minute had burst and the remnants were to be seen playing before small crowds in church basement monthly coffeehouses Si had dilly-dallied with playing the guitar and singing along some folk songs which he had picked up through a famous folk music book which had the imprimatur of the late folksinger extraordinaire Pete Seeger (and lately had picked up songs from another source-the Internet- which moreover provide d the chordal arrangements for many of the songs requested). His attention to the guitar and to practice had always been a hit or miss thing through three marriages and an assortment of children and lots of work to keep them in clover (and alimony and child support when those times came). Still Si never completely abandoned either singing or playing. (For lots of reasons but mainly to keep out of the family’s hair during the Maria marriage he had done his sporadic efforts on the third floor of their house far away from other distractions. But also to be able to say when serious folksingers, including Maria, asked about his abilities that he was a “third floor” folksinger, meaning third rate which seemed about right. That would draw a laugh from those, again including Maria, whom he considered “first floor” folksingers.)
While he was in “exile” Si had had a fair amount of time on his hands not having to attend to family matters or the million and one other things that are required in a relationship. (Si had had to laugh, a bitter laugh, one night when he was thinking about those million and one things that he had been about nine hundred thousand, maybe closer to a million short on keeping the Maria relationship going.) He began one of the most consistent sustained efforts at playing and singing that he had ever done. He continued those efforts when he moved back to his hometown.
What he had begun to notice in exile was that the new material that he was picking up from the Internet or from song books were a lot of old time Hank Williams ballads. Now Si was a city boy, always made it clear that he hated country music, the music of the Grand Ole Opry being his standard for what passed for country music except for one very brief period in the early 1980s when he was attracted to the music of “outlaw” country singers and songwriters like Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt. But he always had had something of a soft spot for the anguished Williams. Had done so ever since not knowing that it was country music at the time he would pester Lawrence to play Williams’ Cold, Cold Heart for him when he was a kid. (Lawrence always had a guitar around the house and always like Si would sporadically play when he had a few minutes from the never-ending toil of providing for the five hungry boys and the one overwhelmed wife.)
One night in his condo in North Adamsville he began to practice on the guitar when he suddenly thought about his father’s playing of that Williams’ song. He went on the Internet to get the lyrics and chords and began to play. As he played a few times he got a very strong feeling that something was pushing him to play that song far better than he played most songs. On a final attempt Si felt that he had played the song almost like he had heard his father cover the classic. That night he began to realize that the ghosts of his youth weren’t always going to haunt his dreams. That present in that old neighborhood former schoolhouse were lots of things that would surface. Mostly though that night he shed a tear as he finished up knowing that he had cursed his father more than he should have he once again called out “Pa, you did the best you could, you really did.”
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