Author Archives: The Night Writer

Friday Fundamentals in Film: Boys’ night out #2

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The boys and their dads reconvened for the second movie, drawn by the smell of the large pan of fried chicken I’d set out and my promise that this week’s movie would have a higher body count than the first movie we watched, High Noon. As we ate, however, I went back to the first movie to once again highlight how Marshall Kane’s sense of duty and honor led him to go back and deal with the trouble that was coming because here were similar elements in this week’s movie, Zulu.

With that I started the movie and used the handy DVD “skip to the next scene” feature to jump from the end of the first scene, where a Zulu warrior picks up a rifle from the British column they’ve just wiped out, to the beginning of the third scene where a Zulu runner interrupts a village wedding dance to bring word of the victory to the Zulu chief. This strategic use of the remote control meant we could skip the bit with the topless, dancing Zulu women without losing much of the pre-battle exposition. (I don’t know how much of this movie the boys will remember, but if they only remember one thing I didn’t want it to be dancing girls.)

The group appeared to enjoy the movie, especially the fighting scenes where I heard a few “whoa’s” and “ahh’s” at different times when the action was particularly intense. I also heard a couple of giggles from one young man when he found some deaths kind of funny. I may ask his father to check his son’s bedroom for carcasses of wingless flies. Anyway, it was later in the evening when the film finished and some of the guys were clearly tired so we tried to step through the discussion questions quickly.

This week there a lot fewer silly comments or attempts to veer off into side topics. Part of it may have been because of the hour, but it was also because the guys were more involved in this story. I found, however, that I got better responses and discussion if I made a statement about, for example, the value of discipline and training, rather than asking a leading question as a way to get the young men to reach the answer themselves. A high point, though, was when I asked why Lt. Bromhead had said he wished at that moment that he wasn’t “an officer and a gentleman.” A couple of the boys grasped right away it was because he would have liked to have run away but knew that he couldn’t because of his family history and sense of duty. This discussion gave me the chance to tie this concept back to High Noon and this time I think I saw a couple of light bulbs go on over some heads.

It was also gratifying that as we finished up the guys were asking what movie we were going to see next and not what we were going to have for dinner!

Music in the news

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So much music news lately. For one, everyone’s talking about the new version of our national anthem translated into Spanish with a lot of new lyrics. I guess it was inevitable as illegal workers and non-workers flood in from countries too poor to offer their own jobs, security and national anthem would come here seeking all those things.

Actually, Mexico has a fine national anthem, borrowed from New Jersey: “Born to Run”.

Changing our anthem around to suit their purposes is just downright disrespectful, and these folks wouldn’t like it if others did the same to them. What will the response be when Iran decides to adopt “Living la Vida Loca” as its anthem?

Also, the media seems awed by the artistic daring and originality of Neil Young’s “Impeach the President” song (those that aren’t obsessed with the fate of The Pickler, that is). I guess somebody has to pay attention to these things and the MSM is just irrelevant enough to do the job on both counts while waiting for someone to leak real news to them. In the meantime, Leo has taken the cue from the national anthem changers and come up with new lyrics to Young’s “Old Man” song:

Neil Young, look at your life, you’re a moonbat has-been!
Neil Young, look at your life, you’re a moonbat has-been!

Neil Young look at your life,
64 and and there’s just no more
Livin’ in a drunken stupor
Mind all full o’ goo…
Livin on half a brain
blew your mind out on cocaine
All your lyrics are inane
And your voice is too…

Looking at Neil’s photo, however, I think there’s an opportunity to rework another of his standards. How about “Forehead in Ohio”?

A trip to the filling station

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There’s nothing like being a night owl and having to get up earlier than usual to go to a 7:00 a.m. dentist appointment. The only way it gets any better is if the appointment is to get a tooth filled. So you might expect I was positively giddy with anticipation when I pulled up outside my dentist’s office this morning at 6:58 to see a man about a cavity.

The fact that I was unfed and uncaffienated also boosted my mood. I had deferred my breakfast and my coffee out of courtesy to the professional staff since even the best coffee smells foul second-hand and even with a good tooth and tongue scrubbing before leaving the house I didn’t want to run the risk of having breakfast remnants hanging off of my pearly whites. You’d like to think dentists and hygienists aren’t easily grossed out, but when you’re going to be on your back underneath them with your mouth pulled wide open, why take a chance?

I know a lot of people have made jokes about how the dentist insists on talking to you when you’ve got your mouth full of stuff. My dentist isn’t like that, preferring to chit-chat with his assistant. This morning both were all a-twitter about the latest American Idol developments and the ousting of someone called “The Pickler.” I don’t follow this show except for what I see on Bogus Gold so I don’t have any attachments to the contestants. My dentist, however, is a big fan of Katherine and told his assistant that he plans to vote for her 100 times. My eyebrows may have been knit closely together at that point, perhaps giving the false impression I was interested in the topic. “Who do you like?” he asked.

Ok, when a guy has needles as long as your arm, high-powered pointy objects and knows where all your nerves are you want to be darn sure you don’t poke one of his nerves accidentally. “Urrr, KAFF-FRYN,” I managed to get out.

Now that everyone was comfortably numb it was time to move to the drilling part of the show. I know, again, everyone hates this part and has their own horror stories. I don’t mind it, really, because I try to look on the bright side of things. In this case, it is an excellent opportunity for me to working on shaping and toning my butt cheeks.

Things went very well, however, and I was back in my car ahead of schedule. Of course, my mouth and lips were numb enough to kiss Hillary Clinton but I knew that would pass. I was still numb on one side by the time I got to work and discovered there were muffins to be had. I was pretty hungry, so I took one and tried to carefully push pieces of it where they needed to go without spilling crumbs or slobber down my shirt. It’s amazing how much you can take such a simple and common function for granted until you have to really think about what you’re doing. I apparently didn’t think quite hard enough, however, because at one point the muffin seemed to be a little too tough and chewy and I realized I had inadvertently (of course it was inadvertent) snagged a piece of my lower lip into the mashing works.

Therefore it is time to cut back on the sweets and brush longer and harder to take better care of my teeth. Events like today’s help remind me that I need another cavity like I need, well, another hole in my head.

Movie night tomorrow

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Thursday night is the second gathering for the renewed “Fundamentals in Film” series for boys. This week we’re watching and discussing “Zulu”.

Show time is 7:00 p.m. in South St. Paul, and we’re bringing in fried chicken for dinner. If you’d like to check this out in person, you can reach me through the contact information on the right, or leave a comment.

Atticus, we need you

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Last week I featured “To Kill a Mockingbird” in the weekly Fundamentals in Film series on this blog. The main drama in that movie centers around a black man, Tom Robinson, on trial for raping a white woman. The man is defended by the main character of the movie, Atticus Finch. As I watched the movie again it got me to thinking about some the interesting parallels and juxtapositions between the movie trial and the seamy details surrounding the current rape case against the Duke lacrosse players.

My interpretation of these parallels does not mean I think the Duke players are innocent of rape as Robinson was innocent. The statements and disparagement of the evidence (and lack of evidence) proclaimed by the defense teams are interesting, but I keep in mind that these are the defense lawyers after all, doing their job while the prosecution has to play it closer to the vest. It is worth noting that while there has been a lot of attention focused on the alleged victim’s questionable past, it turns out that one of the defendents himself may not be a model of decorum either. This doesn’t mean that he or his friend are guilty, either. That judgment must still be played out, and will be in the eyes, ears and hands of the judge and jury that draw the case.

What I found interesting, however, is that implicit in the movie was the prejudicial “you know how they are” assumption by most of the whites regarding Tom and his fellow black men. Part and parcel of that was the belief that one didn’t dare doubt the word of a white woman, especially over that of a black man. Today the situation is reversed: I sense a distinctly implied “you know how they are” assumption about the privileged, white lacrosse players from an elite school. Meanwhile, politically correct doctrine says that of course you never doubt the word of a woman over a man. These are really just different drawers in the same chifferobe, where ugly things have been stuffed for generations. I would have hoped that if we had learned anything by now it is that no sex and no race has a monopoly on honor and innocence, nor is any free from having its own self-serving agendas and rationalizations.

In both the movie and in real life the defense tries to show the absurdity of the prosecution’s case. Atticus Finch, for example, demonstrated that the victim could only have been beaten by a left-handed man, while the defendent was unable to use his left hand as a result of a childhood farming accident. Today, the miracles of DNA testing, cell-phone photos and time-stamped ATM transactions go up against eye-witness accounts and whatever evidence District Attorney Mike Nifong has that has given him the confidence to pursue the case.

In both the movie and in the current events it is clear that something went on. The movie didn’t reveal just what that something was. It will be interesting to see if the same will be said of the upcoming trial. One thing that does seem the same in both cases, however, is that the person representing the interests of the black person (Finch for the defense in the movie, Nifong now) shoulders the most hostility. For everyone’s sake, what this circus needs is the quiet decency of a real-life Atticus on both sides but I fear that possibility left town the minute the first tv camera hit town, leaving the media to grow as fat and thick as ticks on a Carolina hound.

Of course, “To Kill a Mockingbird” was a story, while today’s story is all too real. The real difference for me, however, is that the movie reflected the fear of change. Today’s events reflect the fear that perhaps we haven’t really changed at all.

For the benefit of Mr. Kite (and Alice Cooper and Steven Tyler)… look away

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The thing about the latter 1970s is that so much of the weirdness then can be easily attributed to drugs. Well, drugs and Jimmy Carter. Now when I look back on those times I often get the feeling that I’m revisiting an alternative universe. Lately I’ve been inclined to write these perceptions off as a matter of me getting older, while discounting the ready access to certain botanicals and pharmaceuticals back then. After some unfortunate channel-surfing over the weekend, however, I’m back to my original hypothesis.

Friday night I watched the last half of the 1978 “film”, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Yes, I had full control of the remote and could have changed the channel or looked away, but there was an oddly compelling desire to look, such as what one gets when passing a road accident or a pro-illegal immigration rally. When I first saw the movie in a theater (what are these “movie rental” and “cable television” things you speak of?) I remember lamenting the experience as nothing more than the waste of $3, which I alternatively could have used to purchase half a tank of gas.

Now, looking back from the omniscience of my years I can see where this movie was the place where the fabric of the universe first took on the look of the frayed or torn blue jeans so common back then. Could it be more than coincidence that torn jeans are once more in vogue and this movie is circulating via satellite waves? (And for the record, kids, back in my day we had to work to get those jeans looking like that.)

I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time to movie executives to do a rock opera homage to the Beatles. Beatles music was still big, processed rock and roll was starting to rule the land, no dialogue would make it easier to cover up that no one could act and Peter Frampton still had three or four seconds left of his 15 seconds of fame. Peter Frampton? Lord, yes, the movie starred Peter Frampton, looking like he weighed 110 pounds and in all his white blond curls as if he was trying to channel William Katt in The Greatest American Hero, but with half the machismo.

Predictably the result was more homogenization than homage with casting trying to pull in as many popular icons of the era regardless of field or musical genre. Hence the film also features The BeeGees, George Burns, Steve Martin, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith and Earth, Wind & Fire. The BeeGees have the largest roles after Frampton, but I never could (or never bothered) to keep their names straight; to me they’ve always been Big Hair BeeGee, Missing Hair BeeGee and Blond Hair BeeGee. The trippiest performance, predictably, was Cooper singing “Because” while the best part of the movie was Aerosmith’s great cover of “Come Together” (and I’m not even that much of an Aerosmith fan).

To show just how much drugs (or money) were involved you only need to know that both Alice Cooper and Steven Tyler get their butts kicked by Peter Frampton. Yeah, right, like that could happen, especially since Frampton’s “moves” seemed to have been borrowed from the scene in “Blazing Saddles” where the men’s chorus fought with the cowboys, or perhaps Lauren Bacall trying to hit Edward G. Robinson in “Key Largo”. I don’t know how much they had to pay Cooper and Tyler (or with what) to go along with this indignity, but I hope for their sakes it was enough. I mean, it would have been more believable for George Burns to win the fight, or even Jimmy Carter’s Killer Rabbit who, apparently, wasn’t cast in the movie because he wasn’t famous until the following year.

As insipid as the movie was it somehow exerted a strong pull on me, not unlike what a kleenex must feel as it gets sucked down the toilet. Maybe it was the lateness of the hour and my fatigue, or the effects of some post-hypnotic suggestion I received in the 70s. The pay-off, however, meager as it may have been was the final scene when the producers pulled in every idle celebrity within a 10 mile radius of the studio for a group chorus of “We’re Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” shot to look like the album cover.

I was just about to turn the tv off when the camera started panning the pre-“We Are the World” assembly, challenging my ability to recognize these people from nearly 30 years ago. OMG, is that Johnny Winter? What’s he doing in this abomination? Rick Derringer and Nils Lofgren — what, did the producers have photos of you with teen-age girls? Wasn’t that Jackson Browne, or only Keith Carradine? Hey, there’s that other guy with my name, and Hank Williams, Jr! Bowser from Sha-Na-Na? They must have been offering free food at the recording session and he walked in. Whoa, there’s Heart from back when they were still good-looking, and a low-miles Bonnie Raitt! Leif Garret, go back to your room NOW, young man. They even had Dr. John and Robert Palmer in there, no doubt to ensure that no matter how stupid the filming was, the cast party was smoking.

I know, I know, I need to chill. I don’t know why this set me off, but I’ll just do what Alice Cooper and Steven Tyler do whenever they think of this and that is to repeat over and over, “It’s only a movie. It’s only a movie.”

Challenging Word of the Week: jeremiad

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Jeremiad
(jer uh MYE ud) noun

A jeremiad is a tale of woe, a lamentation, a doleful complaint, a plea for compassion, deriving its name from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the Old Testament prophet of the sixth and seventh centuries B.C. A book of the Bible attributed to him bears his name. He called for moral reform, threatening doom if his message went unheeded. It is the prediction of doom and disaster that we associate with his name. “How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow!…She weepeth sore in the night…all her friends…are become her enemies…Jerusalem hath greviously sinned…The joy of our heart is ceased…O Lord…wherefore dost thou…forsakes us…thou art very wroth against us.” Thus spake Jeremiah; but how very boring it can be to be forced to listen to the jeremiads of one’s trouble-prone acquaintances! Jeremiah is a name given to any person who takes a gloomy view of his times and denounces what is going on in the world.

My example: Oh, the jeremiads of the modern major generals (ret.)!

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Friday Fundamentals in Film: To Kill a Mockingbird

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Courage and integrity aren’t always demonstrated in the heat of battle or proved by some dramatic, attention-getting act. Often the best examples are those of quiet resolution by people who wouldn’t even grasp what all the fuss is about when their actions are honored. An excellent example is the 1962 classic film To Kill a Mockingbird starring Gregory Peck in the memorable role of Atticus Finch. (The role of Finch was voted as the greatest film hero of all time by the American Film Institute).

Most people know the story of the local lawyer who sometimes takes hickory nuts and collard greens in return for his services in the small, southern town of Maycomb during the Depression. Atticus is a widower with two young children, Jem, 10, and Jean Louise (called Scout), 6, who is asked to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman. The story is narrated as a flashback by the adult Scout and despite the town’s sleepy demeanor and the polite and respectful way most people addressed each other, there is an underlying creepiness that gradually builds the drama and suspense.

Despite having known tragedy in his life Atticus is a steady, unflappable man who tells his children, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view; until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” When the local judge asks him to take the case of Tom Robinson, does so even though he knows that many in the town will be angry if he gives Robinson the defense he deserves and is entitled to by law. When confronted early on by the father of the alleged victim he holds his ground, telling the man, “I’ve been appointed to defend Tom Robinson. Now that he’s charged that’s what I intend to do.”

In the ensuing months leading up to the trial the pressure mounts both for Atticus and his family. Scout, quick to defend what’s right, gets into fights at school with children who criticize her father. When she asks Atticus why he can’t or won’t quit the case or let someone else handle it he tells her that he has to do it because, “If I didn’t, I couldn’t hold my head up in town. I couldn’t tell you and Jem not to do something again.” Ultimately he has to tell Jem, “There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep them away from you. But that’s never possible.”

Some, such as his children, mistake his quiet demeanor as a sign of weakness, not realizing that it is the earmark of a man who knows he doesn’t have anything to prove to himself and unconcerned with what others may think about him (his earlier comment to Scout about being able to hold his head up in town had more to do with being ashamed of himself rather than ashamed of what others would say). He is resolute in doing what needs to be done, whether it’s defending Tom or shooting a rabid dog threatening the street where his children play. When he shoots the dog, in fact, he does so dispassionately and with a bit of regret. He reacts in much the same way later when he sits up at night on the steps of the jail, unarmed, to face down a lynch mob determined to drag Tom out and kill him before the trial can even start.

For those who haven’t seen the movie I won’t give away the ending, but suffice to say there are many challenges and suspenseful episodes with help late in the movie coming from an unlikely source. It’s a good message for a family, but perhaps too intense for younger members.

Questions to answer:

  1. Why do you think the judge asked Atticus to be Tom Robinson’s public defender? Why did he come to his house to ask him in person?

  2. Why did Atticus feel that if he didn’t defend Tom that he wouldn’t be able to ever tell Scout and Jem, “not to do something again”?

  3. Was there anything in common between the way Atticus dealt with the rabid dog and the way he defended Tom? (hint: think of what both had to do with his children).

  4. What did Atticus hope to accomplish (and how) when he went to the jail to gaurd Tom from the lynch mob?


Points to Ponder:

  • Though the story is set in the Depression-era south, do the same challenges exist today? What are they?

  • How are these alike and how are they different from what Atticus faced in the movie?

  • What role do men (and women) like Atticus play in our culture? What is the cost to them?

Great Quotes:
“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passing.”

“There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them.”

About Fundamentals in Film: this series began as a class I taught to junior high and high school boys as a way to use the entertainment media to explore concepts of honor, honesty, duty and accountability. The movies were selected to demonstrate these themes and as a contrast to television that typically either portrays men as Homer Simpsons or professional wrestlers, with little in between those extremes. I wrote questions and points to ponder for each movie to stimulate discussion and to get the boys to articulate their thoughts and reactions to each movie. I offer this series here on this blog for the benefit of parents or others looking for a fun but challenging way to reinforce these concepts in their own families or groups. As the list of films grows each week, feel free to use these guides and to mix and match movies according to your interests or those of your group. I’m also always open to suggestions for other movies that can be added to the series. You can browse the entire series by clicking on the “Fundamentals in Film” category in the right sidebar of this blog.

Fun with story problems

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The best part of math for me was the story problems; you know the “If Johnny has six apples and you have no apples, and the government takes three apples from Johnny so it can give you one apple’s worth of applesauce while putting another apple in a “lockbox”, what happens to the remaining apple?”

Today’s Fixit column (it used to be “Mr. Fixit” before the surgery) took me back to those happy schoolboy days when a letter writer asked, “Does it burn more gas and so cost more money if you drive 75 miles per hour to get to a destination than if you drive 60 mph?” as opposed to ultimately saving money by getting there sooner.

Fixit offers this example in response:

Bob and Jim each need to drive 60 freeway miles from City A to City B. Both cars get 30 miles per gallon at 55 mph, the posted speed limit.

Bob travels at 55, but Jim speeds and does 75 mph — wanting to get there sooner.

At 75 mph, it would take Jim about 48 minutes to reach the destination.

At 55 mph, it takes Bob about 65 minutes to reach the destination.

At 55 mph, Bob used 2 gallons of gasoline. At $2.80 per gallon, that’s $5.60 to drive the distance.

At 75 mph, Jim would use 2.5 gallons of gasoline. At $2.80 per gallon, that would be $7 to go the same distance.

Fair enough. Jim pays an additional $1.40 to get to his destination 17 minutes sooner. Maybe it’s worth it to Jim to pay roughly the cost of a tall dark roast at Starbucks (no decaf for him, thank you) so that he can do something else with those 17 minutes of his life. Certainly the StarTribune columnist wouldn’t want to get into judging someone’s lifestyle choices, right?

However, it turns out that Jim paid $155.60 for this trip and arrived later than Bob.

How did this happen?

He was ticketed for speeding on the way and was fined (which could raise his insurance rates), and the stop slowed him down. (If they had traveled together in Bob’s car, both would have saved even more.)

Hmmm. Funny that it didn’t mention how much the boys would have saved (but not the taxpayers) if they had taken light rail. Or the bus. Or how much more time those options would have taken out of their lives. Funny, too, that speeding ticket scenario was gratuitously added in as Professor Fixit stepped from the chalkboard and up onto the soapbox.

In the same spirit, let’s assume that Jim, driving at 75 mph and closer to the prevailing speed of the rest of the traffic than Bob, doesn’t get a ticket and that he and Bob are competitors on their way to call on the same prospect. Jim gets there first, makes the sale and is on his way out to lunch with his new client by the time Bob is easing into a parking space. Or, let’s say Bob is really delayed because of the beat down he received from the long line of angry drivers that got stuck behind him, not to mention the related medical expenses that further drives up the cost of his trip.

Oh, but there’s more:

By the way, federal income tax credits of $250 to $3,400 are available in 2006 and 2007 to purchasers of hybrid-electric or diesel vehicles, based on the vehicle’s efficiency and fuel savings. (Tax credits are dollars deducted from taxes owed.) Act fast. After each auto manufacturer has sold 60,000 hybrids, the credit begins to phase out. See www.ase.org/taxcredits for details. (Check out local excise tax reductions and other benefits for hybrid purchasers, too.)

I don’t think Fixit read the article by Jamie Lincoln Kitman in the same newspaper, Best way to save gas may be to avoid hybrids, or this report: Hybrids Consume More Energy in Lifetime Than Chevrolet’s Tahoe SUV.

Numbers are fun!

Crusted but cheeks?

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That’s what leapt out at me this morning as I skimmed across a local restaurant’s ad in the Strib’s Variety Source section today. My brain said, “What?” At first I thought the this guy had started a food and restaurant column.

After slamming on my speed-reading brakes I backed up and looked closer. The ad actually was promoting “Asiago-Parmesan Crusted Halibut Cheeks.”

Oh. Well. That’s different.

All the same, I think I’ll check out the salad bar.