Category Archives: Just Sayin’

03.11.18
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My Second Coming Out

It wasn’t easy to come out the first time.

I was so nervous my friends would hate me, my peers would shun me and my family would either not understand or just decide not to deal with IT or me at all.

That was the late 1970s and though times have changed quite a bit for the LGBTQ+ community, nothing about coming out – then or now – is particularly easy.

Most of us say we enjoy being different and perhaps we do, but it is also human nature to want to belong and not feel like or be like…well, my favorite expression is the cheese stands alone.

Think of me as this sad cheese while you read on…

Still, we all need to live in our truths in order to be truly happy.

That is why I find that all these decades later I need to come out for yet a second time. It’s painful because I’m afraid this time you will hate me and shun me. At the very least, I am absolutely certain you will lose respect for me and behind my back call me all kinds of names.

It’s about to happen…

But I can’t pretend anymore.

The truth is ––

I didn’t like Get Out.

OH CHAIR

I know, I know, I know!!!

I’ve tried so hard to listen and to get on the bandwagon. Yes, I’m a white guy of a certain age so OF COURSE I benefit from the WHITE PIRVILEGE the film is lampooning. But that’s NOT why I don’t get it!!! Seriously!!!

I mean, you’d be hard pressed to find ANYONE who DISLIKES WHITE PEOPLE more at this point in our history than I do.   Even though my 401-K profits from what’s going on in Washington, I live in a deep, dark blue state (in so many ways) and sometimes back away from telling off one of the far right crazies the way I used to for fear of being arrested for strangulation, I still DO side with the values of JUSTICE AND TRUTH for everyone.

It’s just, well…..

It didn’t work for me.

Or maybe I should say.. sorry not sorry?! #donthateme

I loved what it was ultimately saying and I wanted to see THAT film.   Strap me in MY chair and play me that movie – that everyone’s writing about. I want to see an original seamless screenplay that constantly has me laughing and intrigued by characters and a plot that keep me on the edge of my seat – or even far back into my seat, nodding my head at how the inevitable will happen based on the people and events the filmmaker has unfolded.

What I don’t enjoy in my movies are deus ex machina explanations of characters I’ve been watching for three quarters of a film do bad things. Who thought I would ever yearn for a Michael Myers-like reason?

stay with me here!!!

The opening was sick, fun and promising. The act one set up was creepy and believable. The end of the first act worked. I mean, something was up, right?

Then there was:

– The Second Act boredom. A series of sometimes amusing events and set pieces – some clever set pieces but too many other perplexing scenes that didn’t move the story forward with any discernable dramatic purpose – for me, Okay? For me! At least throw me a slightly more than microscopic breadcrumb so I can play along– or two or three – and I would’ve been satisfied, thrilled even, to join the crowd. #DontDunkirkMe.

Having a sinking feeling here

–Catherine Keener spinning that effing silver spoon in that teacup and ice tea glass and… Arghhh, don’t me make relive it for the 1000th time. I crave to see the queen of indie movies pre and post millennium play this kind of character – if I had any sense of who that character was during most of the narrative.

— That reveal at the beginning of act 3 that I had to wait for-EVAH for to make any sense of why, or how or for what reason can I care when no one is making any sense to me for so long. Even when what was really going on was revealed it felt imposed and cheap, reminiscent of a device from some low budget 1950s horror flick I might have watched long before I came out on Million Dollar Movie but turned off before the end (Note: Million Dollar Movie — A showcase for old, often n.s.g films on NYC television in the 1960s).

Sorry but not even a Keith Haring style homage to the movie is going to do it for me.

You might reject all of the above as ill-informed but just know at least I’ve stopped making silly, ridiculous arguments for my case like the one I made just yesterday on social media — Hey, I really enjoyed Black Panther!

Um, right – So because you liked A Black movie that proves…what exactly? It’s like DJT telling a rally in Pittsburgh he’s the least racist person you know because Don King is one of his best friends and he gave Omarosa…her career?

It plays to no one in possession of their own brain, #GetOut pun not intended.

hehehe

Oh, And just know it really doesn’t help to add, I liked Mudbound, too!

Or give a laundry list of your fave POC films starting with Sounder and then going on through Cleopatra Jones, Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany (yes, Deal with it!), Do the Right Thing, Boyz n The Hood, Bamboozled, Malcolm X or I Am Not Your Negro.

NO ONE CARES. And a case could be made for every one that I only responded to them because they didn’t challenge MY white privilege.

I suppose that may be right. Who are we but an amalgamation of our lived privileges and denials when you come right down to it?

On the other hand, it could just be that it wasn’t my cup of….tea?

Groan.

Childish Gambino – “Red Bone” (Get Out Movie Soundtrack)

02.19.18
by

17 More

I’ll keep this short.

There were 17 people gunned down this week in the latest mass shooting at a U.S. high school. Among them were 14 high school students – many too young to vote and all of them teenagers.

These kids – and three more adults – were murdered by yet another mentally unbalanced young man with yet another AR-15 semi-automatic style weapon.

This was the same gun used to murder 27 more people – most of them between the ages of 6 and 7 – at an elementary school six years ago by yet another mentally unbalanced young man.

The most recent shooting took place in a quiet community in Florida and the one in 2012 occurred in a quiet Connecticut community.   The shooter of the very little kids was only 20 and our latest gunman was 19. Both had long histories of mental illness and there were countless times where neighbors and friends expressed concern about them to local law enforcement agencies.

As for their AR-15s, it is THE gun of choice for young assassins in mass shootings these days because it’s a military style weapon that can a) fire in excess of 45 -100 rounds per minute without reloading and b) inflict lethal damage to all its targets far more effectively due to the high velocity in which its bullets travel.

FACEPALM

That is to say, a bullet shot from a handgun imbeds into your victim’s liver um, maybe 1-2 inches.   While an AR-15 will “pulverize it”, say experts, who use the metaphor of what happens when you drop a watermelon from a distance high above onto a concrete surface far below – much like David Letterman used to do in one of his comedy bits on The Late Show.

But here are some links (this and this) where you can read more specifically about it:

If you have a gun enthusiast friend, neighbor, or family member, you might ask them why anyone not in the military needs a military style weapon and why in many states anyone over 18 can walk into a store and buy one in a matter of minutes.

If they answer with phrases like guns don’t kill people, people kill people, or with statistics on how many more of those guns are available illegally, or admonish you as un-American because you don’t understand the 2nd Amendment (the right to bear arms) – tell them you’ll get to that in a minute. Right now you just want them to be kind enough to answer the first question you posed.

God help me if someone tries to say rap music did this. #dontgothere

I, myself, have tried this with numerous people in the last few days but have thus far been unable to get a straight answer that doesn’t stray into one of those three tributaries.   Perhaps it’s my tone. Okay, more than likely.   But also, just perhaps, there is no adequate answer to that question other than – why not?

Well, there are a whole lot of why nots but, sadly, every one of them is dead. Of course, if we knew who the future why nots were going to be that might be a tad more convincing. Though I’m not 100% sure.

Congress 2018.

The closest we have in the meantime are the voices of a whole lot of surviving almost why nots. These would be the voices of the many teenagers from that Florida high school who managed to survive the latest installment from the all-too familiar American loop of The Hunger Games.

True American Heroes #dontbackdown

Here is a story and videos of their intellectually eloquent and painfully raw, heartfelt responses to our decades long American gridlock surrounding the school shootings/gun issue.

These kids aren’t having it and – shout out to their local educational system, or their parents, or what happens when any older generation callously and continuously puts their younger generation in harm’s way – whether via war overseas or terror at home – they are not backing down.

In an odd way, it reminds me of what the older brothers and sisters of my generation did when a bunch of goons thought it might be a good idea to ship them overseas to fight in Vietnam because it was just too difficult for the elders in power to admit they had made a mistake and were killing their young people for no real discernible reason other than…well, I never understood that either.

Their grandparents marched, and now, so will they.

What I do remember is that in that case it didn’t end well but thanks in large part to the voices of the young being sent to their deaths, it did eventually end.

I fully expect that to be the case here. It’s just a shame to have to wait that long. Or even one more second.

Buffalo Springfield – “For What’s It’s Worth”