the groundhog day project

Popeye, especially Robin William's take in Robert Altman's film, is a strange character. Loving but prone to violence. Kind but prone to insult. He speaks without thinking and, while he's fairly accepting of the people around him (seriously, Popeye and Sweethaven here are like Phil Connors and Punxsutawney reversed), he still has his standards and, when it comes to gambling at least, he's quite expressive about them. Doesn't matter how it might actually help the baby he himself has taking to caring for (and by mere cinematic whimsy, with Swee'pea there, they cannot lose); whatever moral code Popeye's got--his "moralikies"--he sticks to it. Meanwhile, in the real world, you've got Republicans supporting a child molester because he would support their politics, Democrats calling out sexual abusers and harassers all over the place but then when it's one of theirs, do they scream as loudly? And, if they do, what happens when their senator resi...

Since Blackbeard's Ghost is a kid's film, we won't hear details about the death of Edward Teach--still fighting after his throat was cut, he was felled by at least 5 gunshots and 20 sword cuts--or how he deliberately ran one of his own ships aground so the shares of the loot among the rest of his men would be bigger. Or how he would stick lit fuses in his hat to scare the crap out of people with the cloud of smoke around his head. Instead, we get a pirate who is funny, and an alcoholic. My sister Brooke joked last night that she may have learned to drink from this movie. We also get a kissing booth. And, if this were the romantic comedy it occasionally seems to think it is, that kissing booth offers up the ultimate meet-cute with Steve meeting Jo Anne (Suzanne Pleshette) by kissing her. Incorrectly figuring because she's taking money near the kissing booth that she is working the booth. It's 1968, second-wave feminism in full swing, so after Steve proceeds to als...

This weekend, my daughter performed in Twelfth Night three times and had a voice recital. There were rehearsals three times a week for several weeks now and I generally sat around and worked on this blog during those (the rehearsals and the play were 30 something miles away, so it wasn't worth it to, you know, drop her off). And she's got auditions for new things coming up quite soon. For me, fall classes get started this week and I'm teaching a new class I haven't taught yet (though I have covered some of its material as a debate coach). My son's college classes for fall get going tomorrow. My older daughter's last year of her bachelor's gets going in September. My ex (with whom I share an apartment) has already returned to teaching this past week. Like most anyone, we are all so very busy. But, with the right distractions, the right amusements, I at least have figured out how to deal with the stresses of modern life... Until Trump tweets something inane o...

Headline today: Highly educated women are freezing their eggs due to shortage of equally educated men . They should probably start breeding with the stupid men because a) gotta avoid the eugenics implications of the opening sequence of Idiocracy , and b) all men are pretty stupid, in one way or another. I was thinking about starting with a rant about sexism regarding that opening sequence, actually. It's labeled as "Trevor & Carol" vs "Clevon" because, I guess Trish doesn't get to have her name on screen, because Clevon is also breeding with Britney and Brandy... Except I'm not even sure in which direction that is sexist. Sexist toward the women on Clevon's side for not including them? Or sexist toward Carol for the suggestion that maybe it's her fault that she and Trevor can't have kids? Or sexist toward Clevon for putting all the blame on one side of this lopsided equation on him and him alone, while Trevor gets some of his blame miti...

Watching Howl again. Feeling preachy. Feeling political. Tired of so many news stories about refugees, about terrorists, about transgender men and women using the "wrong" bathrooms and scaring all the nice, upstanding, good Christian folk. How dare anyone want to flee a warzone for somewhere safer. How dare anyone lash out at power when they feel impotent. How dare... Actually, those two cover the transgender thing, too. It's all some bullshit war. Christianity being persecuted, of course, because the rest of us (and some of them) don't want them to be allowed to discriminate and hate and hurt and destroy just because "God" says it's okay. And, I'm watching a film. A film about a poem. A poem about a world destroying those who dare to be different, about those who dare to be different trying to destroy the world, or at least to reshape it into something new, something less demanding and restrictive. A film that couldn't exist at the time of i...

Frank McCallister is deaf or Harry Lyme is an oblivious fool who is as inept at impersonating a cop as he is at robbing houses... Actually, that’s not fair. Harry and Marv do just fine with the whole burglary thing until they get to the McCallister house. But, my point here as I start is... Well, just look: Looking right at him, too. That seems to be Frank sitting just a room away when Harry is looking for adults. Or maybe it’s a ghost, like the ghost of Ted Danson in Three Men and a Baby . Or maybe Harry didn’t really want to talk to any adults, because he can’t handle that sort of thing. He only talks to Marv because Marv is a bit immature. Maybe that’s why Harry turned to crime in the first place; he just cannot handle regular life, holding down a job and that sort of thing. A separate issue (but not so separate, perhaps) arises with Kevin’s tendency to talk to himself, particularly while looking in the mirror. Subramaniam (2008) argues, “When a child is born it is unable at fi...

I wanted to start with one of two lines today: What's wrong with you? or There's nothing wrong with you. I had a thought today that really there's nothing wrong with any of us. We have, as a society, decided certain things are wrong, certain actions, certain thoughts. But, those things differ from culture to culture. Sure, there are universals. Murder, for example--it's wrong everywhere. But, I don't think anyone comes to murder--to stick with that example--lightly or, necessarily, deliberately. The final act, even the plotting may be deliberate, but a whole chain of events leads up to such an act. I'm reminded of a passage from More's Utopia : If you allow people to be badly brought up and their habits to be corrupted little by little from childhood, and if you then punish them for crimes to which their early training has disposed them, what else is this, I ask, but first making them thieves and then punishing them for it? (p. 11) I don't norma...