Roma

         

           I’ve always considered myself to be a reasonably good reviewer of books, music, and movies, especially of movies. I’ve been a faithful moviegoer all my life, and I can usually tell good acting from not so good, good plots from stupid plots, clever film techniques from stuff that’s over-cute rather than innovative. I’m still a bit unsure what makes one director better than others, so I’ll just leave that aspect alone. And I’m usually not very far off what other reviewers have said about a movie. When it comes Oscar time, I usually agree with films and actors that have been nominated. However, I fell flat on my nose when Moonlight won for best picture two years ago, because I didn’t think it was very good, nor that La La Land should have won, because it wasn’t a very good musical, but Fences or Hell or High Water were better than either of them. In 2017, Dunkirk was nominated but didn’t win, thank goodness, losing out to The Shape of Water. In 2014, Birdman won but it wasn’t nearly as good as Boyhood. In 2012, Argo won but it wasn’t nearly as good as Silver Linings Playbook. And the list goes on, films that I panned when most others were praising them. More recently, I saw Bird Box and thought it was downright stupid while a bunch of others thought it was very good.

          And now I’m about to stick my foot in my mouth again, when I say that I didn’t care for Alfonso Cuarón’s latest attempt at gravitas—Roma— nor did I think it should merit all the praise it’s getting, considered by many to be the front-runner in the best movie category, and a best-director nod to Cuarón, and best actress and best supporting actress nominations for Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo, the young housemaid, and Marina De Tavira as Sofia, the young abandoned wife. I can’t see any way these two can compete against the other nominees in their categories. And Roma got six more nominations in other categories, making ten all together. Am I that blind? What did I miss that others saw? I even went to some of the reviews to see what everyone was so enraptured by. Oh, they moaned, the black-and-white filming was so realistically beautiful, and Cuarón’s understated score was excellent in its emphasis on the tiny sounds of everyday life in 70’s Mexico City. They even had praise for the big piles of dog poop that Cleo had to scoop off the garage floor so the good (bad?) doctor could park his car. I watched it for the first hour and kept wondering when all this wonderment would begin. Some of the reviewers mentioned that the film comes across much better in a large theater than it does on your television Netflix showing. And the obtrusiveness of the Spanish subtitles rolling across the bottom of the screen didn’t do much for me. In that first hour I kept waiting for the magic to happen, for the poignancy that would bring tears to my eyes for this tale about a semi-affluent family and the women who served it. Never happened. All I got was a much too long view of Muchacho, the martial arts fan who puts on a show for Cleo in their hotel room, much too much Muchacho in a full-frontal nude demonstration of his martial arts moves. I’m pretty sure that scene didn’t serve for any poignancy or beauty of storyline. Muchacho did, though, manage to get Cleo pregnant, and then vanished from the movie theater and her when she told him about it. Whatta guy!

          I quit watching halfway through, but now I feel obligated to watch the other half to discover what I may have missed. I really do hope that Muchacho gets his and Cleo and Sofia get a happy ending. Or not.

Rams/Saints Playoff Game

There’s been all sorts of sound and fury . . . pretty much signifying nothing . . . over the New Orleans Saints’ loss to the Los Angeles Rams last Sunday. “We wuz robbed!” scream the Saints fans. “How could those blind sunzabitches miss that call?” “Me and a bunch of my buddies are gonna sue the shit outta the NFL!” The call? Or should I call it the “no-call?”

Late in the game, in a 20-20 tie with less than two minutes left, the Saints were at the Rams 13-yard line, third down and about five to go. Drew Brees threw a pass to the right sideline that, if complete, would have given them a first down. But the play happened WHAM BAM like lightning. That’s how fast it looked in real time. The defender knocked the receiver out of bounds just as the pass arrived. Incomplete pass, no interference call, no helmet to helmet call, either of which could have been called and maybe both of which should have been called, especially if you were one of the 79,000 Saints fans in attendance who saw the replay in slow motion on the big screen. But it was only obvious when it was viewed in extreme slow motion, not, apparently, to the nearby officials. So the Saints kicked a field goal to go ahead 23-20 with about a hundred seconds left. All they had to do was hold the Rams out of field goal range and they’d win. But they didn’t. Goff looked and acted like a winner by taking them near enough for a game-tying field goal as regulation time ran out. Overtime.

Saints win the toss and take it to mid-field where Brees throws an interception because of rush pressure. Rams take it back to the Saints’ 40, but with fourth down they elect to try a 57-yard field goal for the win. The kick splits the uprights and was so far over the cross bar that it would have been good from 67. Game over. Rams win. Saints lose.

And Saints players and Saints fans weep and wail about how the game got stolen by that no-call in regulation, saying that with a fresh set of downs, Brees would have either taken it in for a touchdown or they would have kicked a field goal to win it, Brees having been able to milk the clock down to nearly nothing left for the Rams to use. Lots of speculation there.

“If wishes were horses” and all that stuff. Now everyone thinks that all plays that could be interference should be reviewed. Or maybe just those in the final two minutes of each half. Or maybe just when a coach throws out a special interference challenge flag anytime during the game. The result could be much longer games or much more confusion. I’ve always said that every football game—high school, college, or NFL—could be determined by the officials, either deliberately or non-deliberately. I’d hate to think any official would deliberately try to throw a game one way or the other. But it becomes more and more obvious that offensive holding and defensive interference on pass plays could be called on every single play. How can the poor officials figure out which to call and which to ignore?  The game is played at such high velocity anymore that it would take Superman to sort it all out correctly each and every time.

Let’s take this idea of reviewing plays to an extreme and say that all plays should be reviewed. Every one of the nearly one hundred plays the two teams would have. Let a play be run, then stop the action while the officials huddle around a tv to see what really happened. Did they get the ball spotted correctly? Was that really a reception or was it a drop? Where was the ball when the runner’s knee touched the ground? Did the ball break the plane of the end zone or didn’t it? Was that flutter pass really a pass or was it a fumble? All kinds of questions could be resolved. It would take forever to play a game, though. Maybe games could be split into four pieces: the first quarter on Thursday, second on Friday, third on Saturday, and fourth and any overtimes on Sunday. Now, wouldn’t that be exciting?

I think one solution might be to allow offensive linemen to hold or even tackle defensive rushers and let the rushers do whatever they can to get to the quarterback; another, to let receivers and defensive backs duke it out with hand checks and shoves and knockdowns. Make no calls except for those moves that might cause injuries. Let’s take it back to mano a mano and see who wins.

And let Drew Brees and all the Saints fans grind their teeth over the unfairness of it all.

USGA Golf Rules for 2019

          The USGA came out with quite a few new rules changes for 2019, quite a few to help speed play, but several others simply to get rid of a few dumb rules from the past. One of the dumb old rules forbade players from repairing anything on the green except for old and new ball marks and old cup replacements. I remember watching a rainy tournament at Torey Pines a decade or so ago. The greens were wet and the spike marks looked like waves on a stormy sea. But the rule said you couldn’t tamp any down before your putt, but you could tamp some down after you finished the hole, as a gentlemanly favor to the players in groups behind. And now, in 2019, after nearly all professional and amateur golfers wear spikeless shoes and leave no marks in their wake, they decide to change the rule when it’s no longer necessary. Go figure.

Another rule from the past disallowed touching or moving anything in a hazard except for taking your stance and striking the ball. That meant you couldn’t ground your club behind the ball.  It also meant you couldn’t touch any vegetation or water on the backstroke. Now you can touch anything you want and even move loose impediments around the ball.

What rules changes will help speed play? Allowing only three minutes to hunt for a lost ball instead of five minutes; encouraging players to play “ready golf” instead of waiting for whoever is farthest away to play; simplifying how to take a drop in a relief situation, from shoulder-height to knee-height to speed up the relief process; allowing the use of distance-measuring devices to discourage caddies from pacing off long distances from ball position to pin.

But probably the most controversial rule change (or at least the most discussed) is allowing the pin to be left in the cup when putting from anywhere on the green. Both amateur and professional golfers are voicing their opinions on this one: leave it in or take it out. For years, golf telecasters have given viewers their questionable advice about chipping from off the green, always explaining that if you want to just get it close, leave it in, but if you want to make it, take it out. The grand guru of putting, Dave Pelz, has done several statistical studies as long as a decade ago showing that more chips are made by both amateurs and professionals when the flagstick is left in. And almost no one paid him any attention. One of the equipment options regarding the kind of flagsticks courses use makes the “in or out” question even more controversial. In the very old days, flagsticks were made of skinny, very light bamboo, followed in the more recent old days by Fibreglass flagsticks, also skinny and lightweight. The momentum of a ball was absorbed by these light flagsticks, allowing a ball to go in that was speeding along but hitting the stick directly. One of the main faults of such lightweight flagsticks was that strong winds could bend them almost double, either breaking them or blowing them right out of the cup. Therefore, many courses today use much heavier metal, narrow at the bottom two feet but much more substantial from there to the top, the weight making them unforgiving for absorbing excess ball speed, thus taking away some of the Pelz findings. So, the decision to leave it in or take it out will depend on what kind of flagstick the course is using. This golf season in 2019 will probably resolve the question for the pros, and we may see more and more of them choosing “in” to “out.”

Coma Rape & Mrs Maisel

          Donald Trump keeps tweeting about all the fake news on all the media except for Fox News. I’d hate to think that any of the news outlets would deliberately obfuscate stories about him or anyone else. But too often lately I’ve noticed stories that report conflicting details. In my last blog about the young woman in the Hacienda Health Care facility in Phoenix, I said that she had been in a coma from age three to twenty-nine, a twenty-six year coma resulting from a near fatal drowning accident. Laurie Roberts, an Amazon Republic reporter, said exactly that in a breaking story just after the young woman gave birth to a son. I trusted that she had her facts straight about the length of the coma. But since then, I’ve read other reports that state a variety of conflicting time frames—Rolling Stone Magazine, 14 years; CBS News, 10 years; several others, 10 years or more than a decade. They can’t all be correct. So, how long has she actually been in a coma? A more recent report in the Arizona Republic, by Bree Burkitt, repeated what Laurie Roberts had said, a coma since the age of three. I realize that this factual discrepancy isn’t as important a detail as her being raped. However, it points out that, although it’s not “fake news,” it certainly is conflicting news, much too much like what Donald Trump spews out in his tweets, unchecked facts that come tumbling out of his mouth in his eagerness to make a point or berate his detractors. He and reporters must report facts, not guesses. Otherwise, we who rely on true stories may worry that not all we read or hear can be reliable truth.

          On Amazon Prime Video, I’ve been watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and what a marvelous show it seems to be. I’m not very knowledgeable about standup comedy even though I’m familiar with a bunch of those who came up through the ranks to win fame in tv or films, and I loved The Big Sick, that film two years ago based on the true experiences of Kumail Nanjiana trying to make it in New York as a standup comic. I think back to all those funny men and women I’ve laughed at over the years, and I now realize that most of them began their careers doing exactly that, standing in front of small audiences in some smoke-filled club or café, trying for five or ten minutes to make people laugh, some obviously more successful than others. Maybe the most successful of all of them is Jerry Seinfeld, but then I think back to Jack Benny, Red Skelton, and Bob Hope, who also made it very big but who also probably had to do their apprenticeships in Standup. Most made it singly, like Bill Cosby (although you might say he made it up and then waaay back down), Bob Newhart, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, and Whoopie Goldberg. Some made it as duos, like Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and Burns and Allen. And some made it through Saturday Night Live, like Jane Curtain, Eddie Murphy, Gilda Radner, and Tina Fey.

          And now here I am, watching Rachel Brosnahan as Mrs. Maisel, trying to make her way up the ladder in standup comedy. She’s funny, she’s smart, she’s audacious, and she’s what today would be called a fashionista. She and her Jewish parents (Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle) live in New York in 1958, a time when comedians had to stay within the legal limits of obscenity or be arrested, when Lenny Bruce and George Carlin often defied those limits and were often arrested. Miriam, or Midge, discovers that she wants to make a career in comedy. She has some success when, a little inebriated and a lot angry, she takes the mike and does an extemporaneous bit about her husband leaving her for his secretary. Susie (Alex Borstein), the manager of the club, recognizes Miriam’s talent and talks her into letting Susie be her agent. The show is very funny, depicting the world of very funny people, and Rachel Brosnahan is too funny and good as an actor that you shouldn‘t miss her. Subscribe to Amazon Prime and you’ll be able to see both of the first two seasons. You won’t regret it.

Rape Victim in Phoenix

Another black eye for Phoenix. The first black eye, I guess, would be Sherriff Joe Arpaio. This time it’s the story of the young woman who has been in a coma for the last twenty-six years and just gave birth to a son. More than a black eye, this is the stuff of a horror movie even more horrendous than all of the Halloweens put together. And the horror isn’t just in the raping of a comatose woman; it’s the horror of keeping this child alive even though one can hardly call a twenty-six year vegetative state being alive. The news story gives rise to all sorts of questions: 1. How could she have been taken care of by a male nurse or attendant in a closed (and probably locked) room with no one else there? 2. How could anyone who bathed her or cared for her not have noticed that she was pregnant? 3. And finally, why should this child/woman be kept alive for twenty-six years in a vegetative state? Somewhere in the news story it’s called “cognitive impairment.” Well, yes. If one hasn’t been able to learn anything after the age of three, that person would certainly be cognitively impaired. I noticed in the coverage that DNA samples of all male employees at the Hacienda Healthcare facility are being taken to find the person who raped her, and raped her probably more than once. And then what? The rapist will be identified, tried for rape, and sentenced to fifteen or twenty years? What punishment should be meted out to the administrators who allowed a single, unsupervised male to care for a comatose woman? And finally—even more disturbing than this criminal act—what sort of religious belief would insist that all lives are sacred and must be maintained no matter what the circumstances? Shouldn’t a reasonable level of quality of life be part of the equation? She is a vegetable being kept alive with breathing and feeding tubes, with no mental growth from age three to age twenty-nine. I’d say that condition is way below an acceptable quality of life. How is keeping her alive humane or benevolent? She’s like a three-year-old soul floating around in space and time. Wouldn’t allowing her to die be far more humane and benevolent than keeping her alive?

Skin Color Revisited

I wrote what follows earlier last year (How odd, now, to be calling it “last year.”), March 31 to be exact. It seemed so relevant then, but it may be even more so today. Lincoln’s “A House Divided” speech may have referred to a more horrific division, but it seems like we may be on the brink of another one not much less horrific, thanks mainly to our extremely divisive POTUS, Donald Trump. Skin color has become a rallying cry for those who line up in skin-color camps. How long will it be before we can all ignore the color of one’s skin and simply see a person as an individual with all kinds on interesting individual features? Will I live long enough to see such a time? Probably not, but I can still hope we’ll get there someday. See what you think.

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          I’m confused by all the genetic labels currently being used in this country and why we still use them. Is anyone with even a trace of Negroid blood considered to be black? I know it once was so, but is it still? Is Meghan Markle black? Does Prince Harry care if she is or isn't? I don’t think so. Is NBC newscaster Lester Holt black? More like a nicely tanned fellow with a very receding hairline. Black is a color and is often used as a synonym for Negroid, but not all blacks are black. Most are those with varying degrees of skin pigmentation, all the way from obsidian black to opal pale. Skin color shouldn’t be what we use as labels for the world’s ethnic groups. Why even have such labels? And if we really do need a label for Blacks, then “coloreds” is much more accurate. But we also try to distinguish other races by skin colors, like red, yellow, and brown. Native Americans are redskins, Asians are yellow skins, and Hispanics, Indians, and a host of others are brown skins. What nonsense. America in the early 20th century was thought of as a melting pot or salad bowl because we were made up of so many different “colors” or ingredients. The melting pot metaphor suggests that we think of all these people who either emigrated here or were already here as different colored metals that are put in a pot, melted down, and stirred together, resulting in a new metal, stronger and more cohesive, a new breed of mankind that exemplifies freedom and unity, an American. Why do we insist on all these labels, especially the ones based on country of origin, as in German American, Irish American, Italian American, Mexican American, or Korean American? What nonsense. We’re all American Americans. And if we stick with nations of origin, would we have to label those from Panama Panamanian Americans, or from Argentina Argentinian Americans. Or should we just call everyone from south of our border South American Americans. What nonsense. “African American” as a label for blacks doesn’t make much sense since there are all kinds of different colors in Africa. Are Egyptian Arabs black or are they a hue of a different color? Or maybe we should use various religions for our labels, like Catholic Americans, Jewish Americans, and Muslim Americans. But how would we then be able to label agnostics and atheists? It’s all so confusing. And nonsensical.