Session: Giallo-Rama, week 4 Movie: Tenebrae (1982) Directed by Dario Argento As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL Plot: An American author visits Rome on a book tour. His visit is met with a murder spree that seems to be tied to his latest novel. Hilarity ensues. Teeing Up: Keith started things off by talking about Dario Argento's place in the world of giallos. Argento wasn't the best writer, or the best at handling actors. But "he made murder beautiful" and raised it to an art form. Tenebrae was inspired by harassing phone calls that Argento got from a deranged fan, and was the second-to last good film that Argento made. Sorry, I don;t remember what the last one was. Opera? Before showing the film, Keith showed us trailers for three other giallos:
Short Night of Glass Dolls
Asylum Erotica
The Black Belly of the Tarantula
My Reaction: It's rare that a movie leaves me breathless. But this did. Part murder mystery, part slasher schlock, this kept me guessing at the end. "Maybe he's the killer," I thought -- before realizing "he" couldn't possibly be (for one reason or another). And at the end, when it was all wrapped up, I knew there would be one more shock left. With two characters left, I didn;t know which one would turn around and kill the other. I was right that one more shock was left, but I was wrong in that it wasn't either of the possibilities I contemplated. Until that ending, I was debating with myself as to whether it was better or worse than Don't Torture a Duckling, but that ending put it over the top, and I gave it a ten out of ten. Class Reaction: There was a lot of great energy in the room as we watched this. The volume of blood -- this movie encouraged us to act out as little boys. Someone (I think it was Dave) and I both made a connection to Jackson Pollack as one character lost an arm and spurted blood all over a white wall. The soundtrack, a set of pulsing synthetic rhythms by Goblin, had everyone going. That being the case, I was surprised that it didn't get tens all around. I really thought Ethan loved it, but he was quite critical, finding the plot uninteresting, and no one to like. But Joe, who gave it a standing ovation, agreed with me that it was the best of the giallos that Keith showed us. The ratings:
The recent dustup regarding United Airlines and their mistreatment of passengers seems new, but I remember when DaveCarroll took the airline on.
Honestly, I don't know what;'s involved in flying with a musical instrument. I've never done it, but I know others have. Duh. I suspect there's more to the story than Carroll shares. And he shouldn't have called out a United employee by name. She's just trying to do her job and make a living within a restrictive corporate structure.
And then the more recent stuff. Not letting the girls with leggings on the flight, having a paying passenger beaten and dragged off a flight. Bumping the hedge fund manager to economy. Kicking the engaged couple off the flight to their destination wedding.
Seems to me United's culpability is clear in some cases (the Vietnamese Doctor who got beaten up). But in other cases, I just don't see it. The legging girls were flying nonrevenue, and the dress code for such passengers is clear.
But at some point, I have to wonder if the hype has taken on a life beyond reality? Do these things really happen only on United? Or are we only hearing about each new case because it's fun to pile on?
Saturday was the April LIDS meeting at Planting Fields Arboretum. The featured speaker was Bill Barsash, who has worked at (and lived at) Planting Fields for 45 years, as one of their horticulturists. Bill's presentation was wide-ranging and varied, but always interesting. He talked about the relationships between types of flowers, and shared lots of amusing anecdotes. In one of my favorites, he talked about taking dates back to Coe Hall -- the mansion in Planting Fields where he lived. "It's not much," he would say, "but it's home."
Also amusing, several of Barash's slides had UFOs and space aliens photoshopped in. Just for fun. Blair noted that what was really great about the presentation is that Barash had a way of making the topic interesting, so one learns material without realizing it.
LIDS members weeding the beds
Prior to the meeting, Blair and I, along with a dozen or so other LIDS members spent two hours weeding the daylily beds that LIDS maintains. I hate getting up early on a Saturday, and digging in the beds on a cold, wet, raw day isn't exactly fun. But it feels important to me to be part of the LIDS community -- and helping on projects like the daylily beds helps in a way that simply attending the meetings doesn't.
And, of course, the bonus -- We got some daylilies and a hydrangea from the compost heap. I have no idea what variety of daylily it is -- the color, form, size, could be anything. And, later at the meeting, Blair and I each won an asclepias seedling. To top it off, one of the other members was giving away Zinia seeds.
The upshot of that is that Blair and I spent a good part of Sunday planting in our own yard. The
ANd the day after, I'm back in the yard planting.
hydrangea, the daylilies, the asclepias. As well as a coleus, some tulips and some milkweed plants that we already had waiting for planting. The Zinia seeds will have to wait until the middle of May.
AS ALWAYS, THERE MAY BE SPOILERS Session: Giallo-Rama, week 3 Movie: Eyeball (1975) Plot: An American tour group is trying to enjoy Barcelona. And they wouldbe enjoying it if not for the fact that a mystery killer keeps murdering them. One at a time. By stabbing them in the eye. Hilarity ensues. Class Reaction: The reaction here was mixed. Joe and Dave rated this very highly, and had a grand old time with it. They found it to be a well-told story, and often great fun. Again, Dave called it early, figuring out who the murderer was before anyone else did. Joe said that he is now sold on giallos. Sean, Scott, Ethan and I were less impressed. We enjoyed it, but found that it was missing...something. Maybe that was a result of our coming off two weeks of really great films. But even being unimpressed, none of us really thought this was a bad movie. We were all kind of stunned by the crucial revelation by one character that she had lost her eye as a child, playing doctor with a friend. You know, if you lose an eye playing doctor, you're doing it wrong. The ratings:
Joe: 9.8 / 10
Dave: 9.3 to 9.4 / 10
Sean 2 / 4
Scott: 7 / 10
Ethan: 7 /10
My Thoughts: After Bay of Blood and Don't Torture a Duckling I had high -- probably impossibly high -- expectations. This just wasn't as interesting. That said, it was a decent slasher/murder mystery, and I realize that it did keep me guessing. So I can't really dismiss it. If it brought me in to that degree. There was plenty of misdirection, which I tend to like in these kinds of films. As an aside, Ethan disagreed with my perspective. If he finds himself guessing at who the killer is, he finds that to be a bad sign. I guess he feels that if he's truly being sucked into the drama he's just letting it unfold. Anyway, I was amused that the Minister in the American tour group looked a lot like Barry Goldwater. I gave this a 7 out of 10. Eyeball passes the Bechdel Test.
Extras: Before the movie, Keith showed us trailers for three other giallos:
Lizard in a Woman's Skin
Death Stalks on High Heels
Four Flies on Grey Velvet
Also, Sean was back, having missed the prior session, where we watched Don't Torture a Duckling. Missing the class experience, he hunted it down and watched it on his own (and then with friends) so he could comment to us. He agreed that it was a great film, and rated it a perfect ten. Oh, and Joe revised his rating of Duckling from 9.8 to 9.95. In so doing, he coined the phrase, "Hot Duck Breath," which I think would make an excellent band name.
I just noticed a book on my shelf that's been teasing me since I got it.
The Land of Painted Caves, the sixth (and last) in Jean Auel's "Earth's Children" series has been sitting in one place almost since I got it. Unread.
I really want to read it. Scratch that. I don't want to read it. I want to have read it. To know what happens and how the story ends without actually going to the bother of reading it. Reading a novel is not something that should be a burden. And, to my thinking, if you're in a novel and find you don't enjoy it, then put it down There are other novels out there.
But I've read the other five books in the series, and I just have to know how things turn out for Ayla and Jondalar. And their daughter, Jonayla. Yes, Jonayla. Oy.
The first book, The Clan of the Cave Bear, was very good. Great, even. It's a stone age fish-out-of-water story, set in Europe when the human family tree had more than one living branch. A little girl, a member of the branch that would produce today's modern humans is orphaned and taken in by a band of cavepeople whose branch would die out. Their ways are different than hers, but it's more than just a difference of custom.There are fundamental biological differences that make it difficult for her to acculturate. It was quite the page turner -- very compelling. It was also made into a movie starring Daryl Hannah, which sucked. The trailer is below.
The sequel, The Valley of Horses, followed Ayla after leaving the tribe that raised her. And it introduces a love interest, Jondalar, who would be with her for the rest of the series. It was also a good novel, but nowhere near as good as the original. The Mammoth Hunters was still enjoyable, but was, in some ways, a prehistoric version of Beverly Hills 90210.
Those were the three novels that were out when I first got interested in the series, sometime around the time I finished college. I picked up the fourth book, The Plains of Passage, as soon as it came out in 1991. By this point, the downward trend (qualitywise) was well-established and seemingly irreversible. But, as I noted to people who would discuss it with me, I had to know what happens. There were, generally speaking, two things that annoyed me about the series. The first was the way Ayla had become some kind of super human wonderwoman. As the story tells it, she's responsible for millenia of human advancement -- in weapons technology, in domestication of animals, in medicine. It gets kind of boring after a while. And then there's Jondalar, her man. He's not quite the genius she is, but he's sure close. And he's the perfect lover. Just right for Ayla the Goddess. My other problem was that each book was longer than the previous one. That wouldn't be a problem if the books had progressively more story to tell. But they don't. They just have more and more of what my grandfather called the "berry-picking passages" -- stretches of exposition describing the flora and fauna, and the prehistoric cooking and construction techniques. Auel had done a lot of research, and made sure it didn't go to waste.
In 2003, Auel released The Shelters of Stone. And I bought it and read it as soon as it came out. But the downward trend had continued, and it was little more than a soap opera with the berry-picking passages. The Land of Painted Caves came out in 2011. I didn't rush out to buy it. I decided I'd wait until I could borrow it from the library. Given my relationship with media at the time, that was definitely a bad sign. I never did get it from the library. It was always out from my local branch, and I never wanted it enough to put in a reservation. Eventually I bought a copy at a thrift store for like $1.50. I may have overpaid. At any rate, I read the beginning. It was some hunting scene, which was interesting enough. But then came the long boring crap following group dynamics and long descriptions of prehistoric technology. At some point I put the book down for the night, and never picked it back up.
I still want to get to the end. Just to know what happens, and to be able to have that closure. But I just don't want to bother...
Blair, Ethan and I spent Saturday night at Joe's (from the cinema history class). In the few years that we've been attending the class, we've turned into a chummy group, and Joe wanted to extend his hospitality to us. And share with us some of the entertainment that he loves -- a sample of what he calls his wheelhouse.
So Keith, Dave and I, along with wives (and Ethan) came over for dinner and some video entertainment.
Joe didn't just entertain. He prepared a presentation of three television episodes (and one cinematic cartoon. The episodes were each from an iconic 1960's TV show, and each was a particularly 1960s-ish episode. But I can let Joe's words explain, since he graciously emailed me his prepared remarks, and gave me permission to share them.
Welcome to our house… and my Wheelhouse!
Now, we leave the dining room behind, and enter a world of surfing, psychedelic lights, and go-go dancing – in other words that wonderful and decidedly unique period known as the mid-1960s, also known as my Wheelhouse!This is the type of presentation that I could never do at Keith’s because it would not fit the rules – but everyone knows that the sixties were about breaking the rules!In the mid-sixties, TV got really weird.A journey that brought us from LEAVE IT TO BEAVER to BATMAN and beyond!That weirdness, and that TV, formed the basis for my Wheelhouse.Virtually every popular fantasy show (save maybe STAR TREK) got weirder and weirder as the period advanced.And, the weirder it got, the more I loved it!I’m pleased to share three prime examples of iconic sixties TV series (…ending with one short theatrical cartoon) that exhibit that weirdness with you tonight.But, not just “ordinary weird”, mind you, but SIXTIES-SPECIFIC WEIRD… meaning that these particular artifacts of my Wheelhouse could NOT have been produced at any other time in entertainment history.The particular series for tonight, BATMAN, LOST IN SPACE, and THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.have – to one extent or another – transcended the sixties to be reimagined in later times.I don’t think I can count the number of ways this has applied to BATMAN – in comics, live action, and animation. LOST IN SPACE had a successful feature film in 1998 – knocking “Titanic” off of Box Office first place in its debut week – had a pilot made for the WB Network, just as that network imploded, and, for better or worse, will be a Netflix series in 2018-2019.THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.also had a recent feature film, proving that you CAN take these series out of the sixties – but perhaps the very best of them still remain there.I promised SURFING, and here it is in BATMAN’s “Surf’s Up! Joker’s Under!” Aired November 16, 1967 on ABC TV.By this time, BATMAN was airing only once a week – so this is only one part, Batgirl had been added, and the outrageous sixties weirdness ante had been upped to its most delightfully absurd, vs. the earliest episodes which, though campy, hewed closer to the 1950s and 1960s BATMAN comic books.With some even being direct adaptations of those older comics.Caesar Romero is clearly having great fun playing the Joker.Gordon and O’Hara are cluelessly priceless in this! And we get to see Yvonne Craig in a bathing suit! So, sit back and take a deep breath of that great sixties atmosphere!To the Bat Poles!
We then viewed "Surf's Up! Joker's Under," a beach-set episode of Batman that featured a climactic surfing battle between Batman and the Joker.
Joe then moved on to the next part of the program.
LOST IN SPACE began as a ‘50s film-inspired black-and-white struggle for survival in the hostile environment of an unknown planet – for the first family sent by the United States to colonize deep space – in 1997, no less!But, when it transitioned to color, it went all-in on the wonderful sixties weirdness we know it for today – led unapologetically by Jonathan Harris, as original saboteur and later comedic cowardly villain Doctor Zachary Smith and his Robot foil.Running opposite BATMAN for three seasons, most likely influenced such a direction.I promised psychedelic lights, and go-go dancing, and here it is in space-spades with “The Promised Planet”!Aired January 24, 1968 (My 13th birthday!) on CBS.Oh, ever have a song or piece of music stuck in your head?Well, get ready to experience that again…
And on came a truly bizarre episode of Lost In Space. Aliens are taking over Penny's and Will's minds, forcing them to dance whenever go-go music is played. And it's played often. This is the episode that Joe referred to as "Space-a-delic."
The third part of the presentation was an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. featuring a go-go dancing gorilla. I couldn't find a clip or trailer for this on Youtube (sorry), so Joe's introduction will have to suffice.
It’s hard to imagine today how HUGE THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. was in its time (1964-1968).There were images of the stars, Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, EVERYWHERE, and parodies of the name “U.N.C.L.E.” were irresistible in all media.Inspired by the James Bond / 1960s Spy Craze, Robert Vaughn’s “Napoleon Solo” was the James Bond of the small screen.But, U.N.C.L.E. was hardly immune to the trend of wonderful sixties weirdness – as most of you saw at Keith’s in 2015, when I showed THE GIRL FROM U.N.C.L.E. “The Mother Muffin Affair” featuring Boris Karloff.I already delivered on my promise of go-go dancing, but here’s more – and, just for Keith, a GORILLA thrown in to boot!It’s “The My Friend the Gorilla Affair”.Aired December 16, 1966 on NBC.Anyone remember the prehistoric jungle girl played by Vitina Marcus in Irwin Allen’s “The Lost World” and its repurposing as an episode of VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, from my presentation of 2016?Well, you’ll find her here – as (Guess what?) a jungle girl!…And, believe it or not, she was born in Brooklyn! Marc will also find old friend Percy Rodrigues - unforgettable as the Commodore in the STAR TREK “Court Martial”, which also featured “The Maltese Falcon’s” Eilsha Cook, Jr.
And, finally, Joe closed with a Roland and Rattfink cartoon, "Hurts and Flowers."
It wouldn’t be one of my presentations without a cartoon… So, finally, we have a very unique theatrical cartoon that, just like our other features tonight, could not have been made at any other time than in the sixties.I never heard of ROLAND AND RATTFINK until this year.But, because it was a Kino Lorber DVD release (as was “Bay of Blood” and so many other great DVDs and Blu-rays), and was originally produced by DePatie/Freleng who created The Pink Panther and was the last studio to make theatrical cartoons (into the seventies) I gave it a try and was not disappointed.From 1969, here is the totally sixties cartoon “Hurts and Flowers”!
I was tempted to insist that we go around the room and discuss our impressions (the way we do in class), but it was past midnight, and I didn;t want to be the one to make everyone lose even more sleep...
It was great to share the evening with the guys from the class (or, at least, some of them) and their wives. I especially enjoyed watching this silliness with Blair -- we don't watch enough video entertainment together -- and hear her laughing out loud to the bestworst of it. She noted that she had never been much for Lost in Space as a kid. She would watch it when there was nothing else on that was worth watching. And even then she'd be ashamed. I kind of understand that. As a big Star Trek fan, I kind of thought of LiS as a third rate imitation. Yes, I know that it came first -- I'm just talking about how I perceived it.
I hadn't seen any of what Joe showed us (except for clips of Batman's surfing contest), so this was a big treat. And I wouldn't have ever seen any of it if I had been left to my own devices.
It's also good to be slowly getting to know some of the guys from the class in a new way.
It's really interesting to see what's happening as the family gets more involved with Stack-Up.
Sharon is kind of interested in the charity. But she's more of a back-room type. I'm not sure where it will go, but for now she's been photoshopping Stack-Up shirts onto Youtubers and others. I think it started with Markiplier. The idea was to show him a photoshopped image to see if maybe he'd pose for a real photo in a real Stack-Up shirt. Here are, in order, Vincent Price, Matt Shea and Markiplier:
It started because Markiplier is apparently big on supporting charities. I don't know about Matt Shea. We'll see. I'm pretty sure Vincent Price doesn't do much posing these days...
Fresh off the success of our Passover Seders (for which he cooked brisket, prime rib and chateaubriand), Ethan is planning to experiment with duck l'orange. Last night we were out at the supermarket picking up orange marmalade and oranges. From the liquor store we got Grand Marnier. Tomorrow we're getting up bright and early to get duck breast at the farmers' market. He's annoyed at me that I won't try it. But I'm, uh, funny, about foods.
At any rate, Ethan is thinking about starting a cooking channel on Youtube. He has put together, provisionally, a list of items he intends to cook for the show. The list he sent me is as follows:
Session: Giallo-Rama, week 2 Movie: Don't Torture a Duckling (1972) Plot: In a rural mountain town in Italy, bypassed by the highways, teenage boys keep dying. A reporter is trying to find the killer, and the townspeople are ready to kill any suspect. Hilarity ensues. Class Reaction: As with last week, this was an all-around winner. Dave called out the cinematography and the music. He also was the first of us to figure out who the killer was. When he called it, I dismissed his guess -- sure that it was one of a couple other characters. Joe gave this high ratings, though not quite as high as he gave Bay of Blood last week. He noted that, while this featured better storytelling, BoB was more fun, and had better transitions. Joe's reaction surprised me. He has often noted that he views movies from a writer's perspective (as opposed to Keith, who has a director's perspective). He has also stated -- multiple times -- that a good story is very important to him. Yet, despite this having the better story, he said he prefers BoB. Ethan said that this is one of the best movies Keith has shown. The ratings:
Joe: 9.8 / 10
Dave: 9.5 to 9.7 / 10
Scott: 9.5 / 10
Ethan: 10 /10
My Thoughts: I had some measure of difficulty trying to decide whether I liked this more than last week's offering. In the end, I went with this, on the strength of the story. I remember being confused by BoB. This story was easier to follow, even though it was a mystery. And the cinematography and music were much better as well. I realized that this had me on the edge of my seat for most of the run. And, despite its running time of 1:48, I never lost interest. I was doing a lot of guessing regarding the killer and his or her motivation. And Fulci did a great job with misdirection. Two giallos down, and I'm loving the genre. I gave this a 9.2 out of 10. Don't Torture a Duckling fails the Bechdel Test.
Extras: Before the movie, Keith showed us trauilers for three other giallos:
After my last post, about the messy fighting (including a filibuster and the nuclear option) that gave us Judge Gorsuch, a friend asked me what I think about the filibuster.
I purposely avoided that question when discussing the SCOTUS fight, because it was irrelevant to the question I was looking at.. The filibuster was a longstanding tradition. Harry Reid eliminated it for all judges except SCOTUS picks. McConnell took it the next step, eliminating filibusters for SCOTUS picks as well. What are we left with? The filibuster for laws and other matters.
I'm into process. I don't like the idea of making changes because it's politically expedient. When Reagan was President, I recall, some Republicans talked about repealing the 22nd Amendment so that he could run for a third term. Same thing when Clinton's second term was winding down. While I don't like 22A, and would like to see it repealed, I only want it repealed if the effective date is some time in the future -- to remove the incentive to repeal it with a specific candidate in mind.
And so it is with filibusters. I didn't like having the filibuster and the nuking thereof be a matter of winning or losing the current battle. If it was to be nuked, I would have preferred that the Senate nuke it, effective eight years from now.
Now, none of that answers the question of how I feel about the ability to filibuster judges.
The short answer is, I don't know. The issue has come up repeatedly, but always with a specific fight in mind. When President Bush was trying to get his nominees on the lower courts, and the Republicans had a majority that wasn't filibuster-proof. Then under President Obama. And now under Trump.
I can recite the arguments for and against the procedure. No problem. But I haven't. That's because the question seems perpetually clouded by one specific issue of expedience, and I know that my thoughts have always been muddied by my feelings about the fight at hand. Unlike, say, the editors of The New York Times, I don't want to present selfish expedience as some kind of high-minded matter of principle.
That said, I can say that there is one area where I want to keep the filibuster: matters of statute. I am in favor of maintaining the ability of the Senate minority to filibuster laws they find objectionable.
The reason? Stability.
If highly controversial laws can be passed by a bare partisan majority, we run the risk of having laws passed, then undone (as soon as the Senate changes hands), the redone (when it changes back). We need to be able to have more confidence in the stability of our laws. Not that I want laws, once passed, to be forever immutable. But there needs to be a bigger swing in popular opinion.
First, in the interests of full disclosure, I note that (all else equal, and absent the ugly power plays that we saw) I much prefer having Neil Gorsuch on the SCOTUS over having Merrick Garland -- especially given that we're talking about replacing Antonin Scalia. However I must admit that Garland was, as far as I know, qualified for the SCOTUS. More on that later.
I have read a lot of commentators saying that Charles Schumer played his hand poorly; in staging a filibuster, knowing that the Republicans would resort to the nuclear option, he weakened the Democrats in advance of any other SCOTUS nominations that Trump may make. I disagree. Schumer was dealt a losing hand, and played it as best it could have been played.
If Schumer hadn't filibustered, the Democratic base would have attacked him for caving in to the Republicans. From that perspective alone, a feckless filibuster is better than nothing. But aside from that, even if he hadn't filibustered, the fact is that, the dynamics now being what they are, the filibuster was only going to last until one of the parties needed to nuke it. Last fall, when everyone expected the Hillary Clinton to win the Presidency and the Democrats to gain a Senate majority, Democratic leadership made it clear that they would go nuclear if they needed to to get a SCOTUS pick through. It's true that that was in the face of the Republicans' historic obstruction of the Garland nomination -- but I did note a few sentences ago that I'm talking about "the dynamics now being what they are." The fact that the Republicans were willing to go nuclear is now self-evident. This way, Schumer forced the Republicans to be the ones to go nuclear. So the Democrats can at least point to them and scream that they're the ones who are breaking the Senate.
I fear that we are entering -- or have entered -- an era in which the President can only get a SCOTUS nominee confirmed if the Senate is controlled by his or her party.
So how did we get here?
The most logical place to start is with the Garland nomination. One can argue that it goes back farther -- the (lower court) filibusters under President Bush (the son) and the gang of 14, Bork and Thomas, etc. And one shouldn't ignore the fact that the tactics have been escalating for decades. Still though, Obama's prior picks (Kagan and Sotomayor) had gone through with relatively little controversy. So Garland is where I'm starting. The Republicans should have given Garland a hearing. And, assuming nothing untoward had come out of it, given him a vote and confirmed him. I suspect that, had it been a liberal justice being replaced (instead of Scalia), things wouldn't have gotten so nasty. That really shouldn't matter. A SCOTUS seat is a SCOTUS seat -- there aren't conservative seats and liberal seats. But it does matter. And we all know that. So the seat that should have gone to Garland -- and I also acknowledge that Garland was a relative moderate, whom Obama probably picked as a bit of an olive branch.
But I don't put 100% of the blame on the Republicans. Joe Biden (1992) and Charles Schumer (2007) had stated that a President shouldn't nominate a SCOTUS pick during his last year. Of course, while they tried to make their points sound like matters of high principle, it's clear that they were simply partisan posturing. The same, of course can be said about all the arguing about the filibuster. The worst part of politics is the politicians. The irony is that Biden's and Schumer's statements were essentially unforced errors, since neither Bush (the father in 1992, and the son in 2008) had any additional vacancies to fill. The arguments that Democrats made last year about how the President's term is a full four years, and his right to nominate SCOTUS judges doesn't end after three are absolutely correct. But Biden and Schumer had argued otherwise, and gave the Republicans cover to do so. But it's more than that -- since the Democrats had essentially paraded out a new weapon in the ongoing battle for the SCOTUS. Arguably, it would have been foolish for the Republicans to eschew use of that same weapon.
That said, I would have preferred that the Republicans had given Garland a fair hearing. Perhaps they could have kept us off the road we're on now. With Scalia, the opening came nine months before the election. But the slope can get slippery very quickly. Next time it could be an opening eleven months before the election. Then thirteen months. Where does one draw the line? And why there? Politicians may start making assertions couched as principled stands, but -- as with Biden's and Schumer's arguments, these will be matters of naked political expedience.
So, during the election -- especially after the first debate -- it was expected that Clinton would win and nominate someone more liberal. Liberals started gloating that the Republican Senate should rush and confirm Garland, since they won't get anything better. And they were hoping that Obama would withdraw the nomination before the Republicans acted on it.
What a difference an election makes. We got the Trump presidency and Gorsuch. Some have argued that Trump was somehow obligated to make things right by nominating Garland, or that Gorsuch should have turned down the nomination so that it could go to Garland. I sympathize. And if the situation were reversed, I might secretly hope for such magnanimity. But I would know better than to suggest it or expect it. That's simply not how it works.
And on to the filibuster. Let's consider a few facts:
The Democrats were disingenuous to claim that this was about Gorsuch not being suitable for the Supreme Court. He got the highest possible rating from the ABA.
The Republicans were disingenuous in noting that this was the first partisan filibuster of a SCOTUS nominee. It may be technically correct, but blocking Garland was the equivalent (or worse) of a filibuster.
The Democrats were disingenuous to argue against the nuclear option. They had already nuked the filibuster for lower court nominees. They now say they kept it in place for SCOTUS because that's different. But they were ready to go down the same road if Clinton had won and they had regained the Senate. The real reason they kept the filibuster for SCOTUS in place is that they didn't need to nuke it.
Gee, there's lots of disingenuousness all over the place.
Yeah, I am happy to have Gorsuch on the court. I prefer him to Garland. But there will come a day when something happens that I don't like, and that something will be traceable back to these events. And I won't be happy about it.
You know what's the ultimate irony about Passover? The seder itself. Let me explain...
What's the best-known symbol of Passover? Matzoh -- the thin crackers of unleavened bread, which are also central to the seder. The matzoh is commemorative of the fact that the Israelites were so rushed in their exodus from slavery in Egypt that they didn;t even have time to let their bread rise.
And, with that as the focus, we spend gobs and gobs of time in preparation of the Passover meal where we eat the only kind of bread that our forebears had time for.
EDIT: I removed a footnote. Two, technically. They didn't really contribute to this post and someone noted that the post may be better without them.
The Passover Seder, which is a sort of combination of meal and religious service, includes the retelling of the story of Exodus, with lots of added commentary from various Rabbinic sages. One of the sections that has always fascinated me involves the plagues that God unleashed on the ancient Egyptians.
We're all familiar with the Biblical account that features ten plagues? Rabbi Yosi the Gallilean notes that those plagues were referred to as being the finger of God, and that at the Red Sea ;the Egyptians faced the hand of God. He interprets that to mean that there were fifty plagues at the Red Sea. Rabbi Eliezer one-ups him by arguing that each plague was fourfold. So those sixty plagues (ten in Egypt and fifty at the Red Sea) were actually 240. Not to be outdone, Rabbi Akiva wargues that each plague was fivefold, so they total 250. I have long found it fascinating to read the eagerness to see who can interpret God's wrath in the most extreme way.
That passage was on my mind in light of Mike Pence's personal rules of conduct and the outraged hoo-hah that accompanied. Pence won't dine alone with women other than his wife, and won't go to functions where alcohol is served unless his wife is with him. Cue the outrage machine. All women are temptresses! All women are is temptresses! This is misogyny! And he's a hypocrite to boot, since he works for a man with...uh...looser standards for behavior toward women. And it seemed like all these commentators were jumping over each other to see who could denounce Pence in the most extreme way possible. The culmination (for now, AFAIK) comes from Ashley Csanady who, writing for Canada's National Post, argued that Pence's personal rules of conduct are "Rape Culture" at work.
Give. Me. A. Break.
I don't follow Pence's rules for life, but they're his rules and that's between him and his wife. He's not trying to tell others how to live. And to be clear, if you think that, with his other actions and opinions, he's trying to tell others how to live, then address those issues. Don't pin it on a nonissue like this.
In fairness, there has been one argument against his rules that has some merit. That's the fact that, in a world where so much is based on personal relationship and bonhomie, not having dinners with female colleagues puts them at a disadvantage professionally. And, yes, that is unfair. I don't know how, for practical purposes to overcome that. But insisting that Pence can't or shouldn't have this personal rule is not the answer.
Avoiding such situations is not misogynistic. It's not implying that women are all sirens, waiting to drag men to their ethical doom. But it is a recognition that humans are humans and temptation is a powerful thing. Even if you know you can stand up to temptation, it can still be better to avoid it. And that's not even addressing the potential for rumors and innuendo.
But all that aside, the argument that this is "rape culture" ( a term that, gets applied so broadly as to be virtually meaningless) is simply delusional. Csanady's argument, stated concisely, is:
I've known couples whose marriages fell apart because of infidelity. And said infidelity started with temptation. One partner was alone with someone else. And they gave into temptation. But rape wasn't involved. Consensual sex was. It's Csanady who makes the mental leap to rape. Essentially assuming that men are monsters and/or women lack sexual agency. As I stated above, I don't live by Pence's rules. I have had dinner alone with women other than my wife -- sometimes married women even. And I haven't cheated on her. But I don't fault anyone for imposing this extra rule of conduct on himself or herself. The outrage is simply another attempted gotcha at an administration that people hate. You want more Trump? Objections like this are how we'll get more Trump.
Session: Giallo-Rama, week 1 Movie: Bay of Blood (1979) Plot: After a rich woman dies, everyone connected to her tries to kill each other in order to inherit her land. Hilarity ensues. Class Reaction: This went over like gangbusters. The cinematography was great. The transitions were superb. And we all agreed that this had the best decapitation scene we're ever seen. The energy in the room was great. And when we got to the ending -- and what an ending it was -- there was just this huge rush. I enjoyed Joe's comment that this was sort of like a Scooby Doo episode in which people actually get murdered. It was noted -- I forget by whom -- that Friday the 13th Part 2 was heavily influenced by this, though I wouldn;t know since I never saw it. Keith opened by explaining what Giallos are -- essentially, lurid crime dramas from Italy. So named because the film genre was adapted from books. The books were called giallos because they were printed on yellow paper (to alert the reader that they were not for children), and "giallo" is Italian for "yellow." It was a helpful explanation. Though I think we all had a vague idea of what Giallos were, we weren't really sure and it was helpful to introduce a month of such films with a bit of exposition about what they are. The scores from everyone else:
Joe: 10 / 10
Dave: 9.5 to 9.8 / 10
Sean: (declined to rate, as he wasn't familiar enough with Giallos)
Scott: 9.5 / 10
Ethan: 9.5 to 10 /10
My Thoughts: As the movie was winding down -- or at least coming to its conclusion, since it never really wound down -- I found myself conflicted. I was really enjoying the movie for a lot of the same reasons that everyone else was. But I was having a hard time following the plot. Wait, who are they? How are these people related to those people? Why is she trying to kill him? And yet, despite my confusion I was enjoying it immensely. I had pretty much decided that I would be rating it a 7. But then the ending came, and that pushed it up to 8. And during the post-viewing conversation, my appreciation for this movie was growing. In the end, I gave it a 9. But it was going through my head the rest of the night, and a lot of today. If I were rating it now, I'd probably give it a 9.5 or so. This was my first exposure to Giallos, and I have to say it was a great introduction. I only hope that the next three don't prove to be a letdown. I;m not quite sure if Bay of Blood passes the Bechdel Test, at least technically. But the film has enough women in who are driving the action, that I think it passes the spirit of the test if not the letter. I also note that Bay of Blood was released under a variety of names, including the following:
The Odor of FleshTwitch of the Death NerveCarnageThus Do We Live to Be EvilBlood BathLast House on the Left Part IIEcology of A CrimeThe AntecedentChain ReactionNew House on the LeftBloodbath Bay of DeathThat Will Teach Them to Be Bad
Extras: Before we watched the movie, Keith showed us the trailers for three other Giallos. I wish I had noted down the titles. He says he'll do that each of the rermaining weeks of this session.
Statements that refer to an amount -- typically potential savings or prices as "up to <amount or percentage> or more!"
It's on my mind today because I got an advertising flyer in the mail from Liberty Mutual Insurance. They want me to switch my auto insurance. Actually, I'm happy with GEICO, thank you very much. But the following three statements appear in bold:
Save up to $519.52 or more a year.
starting with savings of up to $519.52 or more a year.
On average drivers save up to $519.52 or more a year
The problem is that the statements are essentially meaningless. Because the phrases "up to" and "or more" are included, it doesn't really say anything. The statements could be rewritten with $1,000. Or $10,000. Or $57,873,293.61. It would still be just as true.
I've seen this kind of thing in ads for sales -- "all prices reduced up to 50% or more!" And it always annoys me.
On Saturday I posted my thoughts about a national security forum I attended with Ethan. That post is here. I realize that there was something I wanted to note but forgot to.
Someone on the panel -- I forget who, but I think it was Tom Nichols -- noted one development in policy that is very dangerous for our country. More and more, people (from all points in the political oort cloud) base their opinions about foreign policy issues on partisan considerations on how it will affect particular politicians or political parties.
Put another way, they're putting their "team" ahead of the country.
Now, I don't think Nichols (or whoever it was who made the point) was saying that people consciously think, "Gee, does this hurt or help my party? I'd better take the position that helps." But on a subconscious level, people find all sorts of rationalizations to come to the position that will help their cause. At least that's my interpretation -- maybe I'm just rationalizing so that I can agree with Nichols, a man whom I admire.
At any rate, it's problematic if people are basing decisions on what policy they support based on what politicians they like. They -- we -- should be doing the reverse.
Opening day...When every team in the majors has a chance of winning the World Series.
How important, a friend at work asked, is it for a team to win on opening day?
Looking back at the last five seasons, four of five World Series winners had won on opening day. The one exception, the 2012 Giants, lost to Arizona on opening day. For the rest of this post I will assume that that statistic accurately represents the underlying dynamics of the game, and that nothing has changed in those dynamics.
There are thirty teams, and fifteen opening days. Over the past five years there have been 75 winners of opening day games, of which four won the World Series. So winning on opening day means that the probability of winning the World Series is 4/75. By contrast there were 75 losers of opening day games, of which one won the World Series. So losing on opening day means that the probability of winning the World Series is 1/75. Based on that, winning on opening day indicates that your chances are four times as great as losing does. Which, I guess, makes sense based on that four-out-of-five statistic.
Of course, the shortcoming of this analysis (aside from the broad assumption stated in the third paragraph above), is that it reads as if I'm saying that winning is what causes your odds to increase -- an example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. I think a better guess is that winning on opening day is correlated with winning the World Series because both feats are more likely to be achieved by good teams than by bad. Which is not to say that winning on opening day has no positive effect on a team's chances of winning the World Series. All else equal, a team is better off going into game 2 with a 1-0 record than with an 0-1 record. But only slightly.
Now, do you really want to know what game is important? If you want to win the World Series, make sure you win the last game of the postseason.
If anyone has any thoughts on deepening this analysis, I'm all ears...
Ethan and I attended a panel discussion on global security at the NYPL. It was one of six discussions that were part of a program titled "Shades of Red and Blue: Uniting Our Divided Nation. The idea being to get people who disagree to talk in a civil manner. It was largely successful.
While the goal is laudable, our main purpose was to hear Tom Nichols speak. Nichols is one of Ethan's favorite national security experts -- the others being John Schindler and Kurt Schlichter. Yeah, I know -- some parents' teenagers have favorite rock stars or football teams. My teen has favorite national security experts.
The talk was somewhat wide-ranging, as the panelists made points about FDR acting as the nation's teacher, the changing nature of warfare, and America's changing role in the world.
Nichols made the point -- a couple of times -- that Americans as a whole are ignorant of foreign policy and its complexities. The first time was in response to co-panelist Walter Russell Mead arguing that the American electorate has been remarkably consistent over a period of decades in voting against American involvement overseas. Nichols' response was that they weren't so much voting against involvement as voting on other issues. The last time he made the point was when an audience member began a multi-part question by noting that foreign policy isn't complicated -- it's just an extension of interpersonal relations -- if you're nice to others they'll be nice to you.
If I were a foreign policy expert, I'd have blown a gasket at that. Nichols calmly said that he disagreed, and foreign policy is complicated by the possibility of unintended consequences. I can't speak for him, but I suspect that he relied on considerable restraint.
After the panel discussion, Nichols stayed to talk to (and take pictures with) interested audience members. Listening in, I heard him discussing "fake news." He argued that fake news does represent a threat to our country. But he was clear that "fake news" should not be used as a placeholder for "editorial positions I disagree with."
