the groundhog day project

Today is Day 1096, the last day of the third* full year of this blog. I'm watching Groundhog Day tonight. I saw The Emoji Movie today. I don't think I have a lot to say. Except this: Two important movies in theaters right now... No. Two important movies in theaters right now are Detroit and The Emoji Movie for two very different reasons. I was going to joke about how both involve the use of force to stomp out those who are different from the norm (not white, and not singularly expressive), and I can still say both will induce rage in the discerning viewer. But, I won't go any further with the comparison because it would be 1) disrespectful to what Detroit represents, to what it could and should do for its viewers--and those viewers should be many, and won't be enough-- and it would be 2) pointless when there are better points to be made. For example, Detroit should make you angry because people are racist assholes, because the slave trade and systemic racism ...

I’m home from a spontaneous trip to the Hollywood Hills tonight. Went up there with my son, and we hiked around in the dark and took some cool photos of the city lights. It’s the kind of spontaneous trip that makes life quite interesting. The kind of trip that slows life down so you can look around. Ferris’ philosophy, which he relates at the start and end of the film, is like the thesis statement for the Groundhog Day Project . For Groundhog Day . For Phil Connors. I think of my WWPCD? bracelet and the answer is simple—take whatever Ferris Bueller would do and shave off a little dickishness. But, there are some other things to get out of the way on this, Day 7 with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off . The lost topics. i.e. the topics I could get to if I had more days. I mean, if I had another week or more with this movie, I could do an entire series of entries on German-American immigrant history in Chicago and how this film is a celebration of their contribution to America—you think it’s a...

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...