Month: February 2016

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Race

The 2016 Olympics in Rio will mark the 80th anniversary of Jesse Owens’ historic wins at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Hitler meant for the games to provide proof of his racial theories of Aryan dominance, but instead, Owens set world record after world record and showed the world that racial harmony is possible by befriending his German rival Carl “Luz” Long.

I’m a self-described Olympic geek, and it’s stories like Owens’ that are the reason why I find the games so compelling in ways that most professional sports leave me cold. At their best, the games celebrate our common humanity and suggest sportsmanship still has its place, and not all competitors have to be motivated by demonizing their opponents. That’s why Hitler’s racial attitudes were so counter to the Olympic ideals, and Owens’ triumph so profound. That Owens did it while facing down similar toxic philosophy back home in the United States only speaks to the strength of his character, and helped many white Americans take the first steps away from notions of racial supremacy.

Jason Sudeikis (left) and Stephan James finish strong in Stephen Hopkins’ triumphant biopic Race.

Race, director Stephen Hopkins’ biopic of Owens, traces the track star’s critical years as a freshman at Ohio State, where he first turned heads by winning four gold medals at the national NCAA Championships the first year he competed. Casting former teen TV star Stephan James as Owens was one of Hopkins’ best choices. James reportedly stepped in after John Boyega dropped out of the production in favor of playing Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I’m sure Boyega would have done a good job, but James grabs the baton and runs with it, capturing Owens’ inherent kindness and the stoicism that got him through pressures that would have crushed most men. In the crucial, movie-defining scene where he first steps onto the Olympiastadion Berlin field to face a crowd of 100,000, he seems to physically shrink for a moment before gathering himself up and striding into battle. Hopkins not only has the physicality to portray Owens, but also the timing and chemistry to keep up with former SNLer Jason Sudeikis, who plays Larry Snyder, the Ohio State coach who recognized Owens’ once-in-a-generation talent and taught him the technique to achieve his potential. Sudeikis plays Snyder as a hard-boozing, boisterous man obsessed with track-and-field dominance because he is haunted by the sense that he missed his shot at Olympic immortality. Like Snyder did for Owens, Sudeikis does for Hopkins in their scenes together, pulling him out of his shell and challenging him into greater performance.

Stephan James as Jesse Owens

The sources I consulted listed Race‘s budget at $5 million, but that seems like a lowball considering all of the period production design on display. Like Straight Outta Compton, director Hopkins plays it straight, favoring well-executed but conventional images over any sort of psychological impressionism. When the movie concentrates on the Owens/Snyder story of the struggle for athletic excellence, it soars. But it gets bogged down in some unnecessary digressions, such as the story of the Nazis’ favorite filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s (Carice van Houten) struggle to make Olympia, her documentary about the games. But at least that subplot gives us opportunity to see Danish actor Barnaby Metschurat’s ice-cold portrayal of Joseph Goebbels.

Race‘s biggest weakness is its editing, which is often jittery and unsure when it needs to be steady and clear. I guess it’s supposed to be a modernist stylistic choice when it takes five cuts to show Snyder pour a single shot of whiskey from a bottle, but it made me want to scream, “Pick a shot and stick with it! There are Nazis to triumph over!” If this job has taught me anything, it’s that a movie doesn’t have to be perfect to be emotionally effective, and ultimately, Hopkins and Sudeikis carry the day, with a little help from the heroic story of the World’s Fastest Man.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Kasich, Kicking Off a Candidate Weekend Here, Hits the Ideological Middle

CREDIT: JB

JB

Kasich in the round at Holiday Inn

Governor John Kasich, the Governor of Ohio and one of five contestants left standing in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, came to Memphis on Friday night — a day before the presumed GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump, two days before Dr. Ben Carson, pretty much an also-ran at this point, and four days before Tennessee and a dozen other states vote on Super Tuesday.

After arriving roughly an hour past his 6 p.m. start time due to a flight delay and being introduced by local Republican eminence Brad Martin, Kasich spoke before a crowd of some 700 packed into the ballroom of the Holiday Inn on Central Avenue and then indulged the gathered media with an availability in a nearby private room of the hotel.

The Kasich who spoke to the ballroom multitude was essentially a more sustained dose of the same Kasich who has become a familiar presence in the series of GOP debates on TV — straightforward, friendly, experienced, non-abrasive, and logical, with just the right degree of tongue-in-cheek attitude and ingratiating manner.

There was a wink in his voice when he spoke of having just experienced a “demolition derby” (presumably the rowdy WWE-style debate on CNN Thursday night in which candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz ganged up on Trump) and of “how great it was” to remain “an adult in the room.”

The crowd rewarded that with applause, and Kasich continued: “You know, the way I think you win an election is, you talk about who you are, what you’ve accomplished, and what your mission is. I don’t think it’s about getting down and wrestling in the mud.”

Whereupon the Governor dilated a little bit on who he was and what his mission was.

This Kasich can run through the political check-list in such a way as to leave the party conservatives in the room happy while suggesting to the independents and Democrats he’s their kind of guy, too.

As an example, when, during a Q and A Kasich was asked by an audience member to dilate on “Obamacare” (a.k.a. the Affordable Care Act), his answer conformed to the standard Republican catechism — the Act had raised rates and deductibles too high and needed to be replaced — but he said so without any of the usual accusatory fuming and bombast favored by his primary opponents.

Kasich duly, and with evident sincerity, vowed that no citizen should be left without medical care. And when he spoke of his alternative — a system of exchanges to vend insurance alternatives for most people and Medicaid for the poor — he made it all sound remarkably like… Obamacare.

And, asked about the Second Amendment, he endorsed it without bluster and segued neatly into a compassionate plea for dealing systematically with the mental illness he saw as being common to the perpetrators of gun violence.

He spoke of his “dirt-poor” childhood in a blue-collar Pittsburgh suburb and of his mailman father who would celebrate the successes of the people on his route and cry with them over their sorrows and who, with his mother, would be killed by a drunk driver. He related all this to the anxieties of people in today’s world but leavened the sad tales and Norman Rockwell tableaus with spunky stuff like the story of how, as a college freshman at Ohio State, he hustled his way into, first, an audience with the president of the University, and then, remarkably, with the then-serving President of the U.S., Richard Nixon.

“For the young people here, keep pushing until somebody tells you no. That’s what life is,” Kasich advised, going on to lament that, after 18 years in Congress, he’d peaked out on his time in the Oval Office with those 20 minutes he got back then.

Besides being extraordinary in its own right, that story (which was illustrated in a recent TV bio-clip which, indeed, showed the gawky young teen being greeted by Nixon) has a parallel of sorts in the long-odds challenge Kasich faces in his current endeavor to get into the Oval Office on his own.

Despite Kasich’s high-water finish of second place to Trump in the New Hampshire primary, most pundits look at his single- and low-double-digit standing in other polls and primaries and couple him with the beatifically irrelevant Ben Carson as mere adjuncts to the three-man slugfest featuring Trump and the battling Mambo brothers, Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

But, as his artful courtship of the Holiday Inn crowd Thursday night indicated, with his chameleon-like way of hitting the ideological middle on subjects ranging from drug treatment to educational enhancement to job programs, and with a still-boyish charm that easily co-exists with a professional manner and convincing résumé of gubernatorial achievement, Kasich has managed to make the case for himself as an alternative to the ego-trippers and slicks and bully boys of this presidential race.

This Kasich can and does (and did) kiss babies. But there is another Kasich, too, a scratchier one that the media got to see in the post-event availability.

It should be noted, for what it’s worth, that the Governor is among those candidates (Trump is another) who will pause, during his remarks to a crowd, to sweep his arm — accusingly? boastfully? or both? — in the direction of the attendant media folks on their riser, usually in the rear of the venue, as if to say (and sometimes to actually say), ‘There they are!’ (The rascals!) Hello, Dr. Heisenberg.

In any case, right away during his availability, Kassich was probed at some length for a response to the sensation of the day, an endorsement of Trump by New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was forced out of the race after a poor showing in New Hampshire but still presumably maintains some cred.

Kasich allowed as how yes, he was disappointed and, yes, he had hoped that he, not Trump would get the nod from Christie, and that yes, he had even asked his fellow governor for it. But he developed something of an edge as questioning of that sort went on and nearly lost it when a reporter asked too insistently that he reveal the name of a forthcoming luminary that he’d hinted would be endorsing his own candidacy. (See video clip at bottom of page.)

(On Saturday, the Kasich campaign would announce endorsements from former G.W. Bush-era Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman. Could that have been who? Really? Cue Miss Peggy Lee.)

The last question at the media availability, which pre-supposed that the punditocracy was correct in presuming that the jig was up for his chances, got a little further under his skin and scarcely improved Kasich’s mood. But in his curt response to that, the Governor made it clear that, to his mind, he had just begun to fight and that he would, for example, pick up a handsome passel of votes in the winner-take-all primary in Ohio, two weeks hence. Count on it.

Maybe, as some present must have thought, this was just a man going through the denial phase of coping with oncoming misfortune. But maybe, too, this harder edge that was now showing through (and banishing any residual hint of Eddie Haskell courtiership) was a sign that, if and when Kasich does get to be the last obstacle for, say, a Trump or Rubio to overcome, he won’t be found wanting for the fight.

Meanwhile, The Donald himself will be here on Friday, in Millington. The show goes on, and there are rumors of a mystery guest.

Kasich, Kicking Off a Candidate Weekend Here, Hits the Ideological Middle

 

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

On the culinary properties of coffee and wine.

CREDIT: Ari LeVaux

Thanks to the impact that coffee and wine have on my taste buds, breakfast turns me into a speed freak. Steak, meanwhile, converts me into a temporary alcoholic — at least until it’s gone.

Put me in front of a greasy or sweet breakfast, and I’m going to drink coffee like it’s oxygen. This is how my body extracts maximum pleasure from the muffin or omelet I’m chewing — by bathing my mouthful in coffee. The coffee’s acidic bitterness makes the flavors of the food stand out and completes the meal. I’ve researched this relationship at many a greasy-spoon diner, where servers endlessly circle to keep your cup full. What the coffee lacks in quality, it makes up for in quantity. That’s important when you’re eating with a beverage condiment, because the last thing you want is for that well to dry up.

Later in the day, there are many foods that essentially command me to drink wine. If I’m chewing a succulent piece of meat, for example, I need to be drinking wine at exactly the same time. Otherwise I get distressed, like an addict in withdrawal.

While there are many foods that go well with wine, only one, meat, will make me drink wine like a dehydration victim would drink Gatorade. When meat and wine are available, it is a scientific fact that I will be stuffed and wasted. And that is pretty much the only time you will see me wasted.

Other than producing buzzes, coffee and wine otherwise seem completely different. But if you look beneath the surface you can see that they are competing for the same niche in the ecosystem of your dining table: the acidic beverage niche.

Acidity serves to enhance the pleasure derived from fatty foods. The fat coats your taste buds and the acid washes that fat away, exposing and stimulating the taste buds and creating fireworks of juxtaposition. If necessary, you may have to adjust fat levels to achieve this balance. I generally do so with mayonnaise.

This principle of creative tension is at the heart of established pairings like wine with cheese, coffee with cream, and 10,000 other flavor combinations.

One thing you rarely see is coffee and wine together. One of them always needs to be there, but having both would be like having two alpha males in the same room. Potentially rough, and at the very least, awkward and uncomfortable. It turns out that another one of my favorite foods — chili pepper, aka chiles — can smooth over this tension.

Like wine and coffee, chiles go exceptionally well with fat, from the jalapeño popper and its elder, the chile relleno, to the requisite squirt of hot sauce upon your big greasy breakfast.

Like coffee and wine, chiles produce their own kind of buzz — an adrenaline rush, to be exact. And like the others, chiles have many proven and suspected medical benefits, including reducing body inflammation and improving lipid levels in the blood. But unlike coffee, wine, or fat, there are few apparent reasons not to indulge one’s chile-tooth to its fullest.

For years, I took it as a given coffee and wine simply don’t mix. It’s an either/or situation. But this assumption was discredited when I bit into a piece of pork belly that had been braised with red wine, coffee, and red chile.

Amazingly, the coffee and wine were able to join forces and forge a common flavor all their own. This union was mediated by the chile, the sharp bitterness and sweetness of which formed a narrow bridge between the normally disparate flavors of wine and coffee. That all this flavor alchemy came together in the context of a succulent piece of pork made the experience all the more mouth-melting.

This revelation went down at the magical, and sadly defunct Casa Vieja in Corrales, New Mexico, where I consumed this dish next to a crackling fire of fragrant desert wood. Since then I’ve endeavored to recreate this recipe, and somewhere along the line I think I actually surpassed the original, stealing tricks from similar recipes I found online.

My current version combines pork and venison, but any meat will work, even chicken. Bones, whether in oxtail, osso buco, or ribs, will improve the result. The tougher the meat, the better. But if using very lean meat, there needs to be some fat, like bacon or olive oil.

The wine and coffee-based broth tastes kind of disharmonious when you first combine the ingredients. But it eventually cooks into something special, a flavor that is deep and darkly delicious and thoroughly unique.

Ari LeVaux

Bitter rivals unite.

Fatty meat cooked in coffee and wine

2 lbs meat

1 cup wine, of a quality you would drink

1 cup of strong coffee (no greasy spoon brew here)

3 bay leaves

1 large onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 tablespoons mild red chile powder

2 Santa Fe-style dried mild red chiles, seeded and crumbled

2 mild pasilla chiles (or more red chiles), seeded and crumbled

Salt, pepper, and garlic powder

Olive oil

Brown the meat in whole chunks under the broiler. In a pan, sauté the onions, garlic, and bay leaves in oil. When onions are translucent, add chiles. Cook a minute, stirring, then add the coffee and wine. Cook until the volume reduces by half. Season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Add the meat. Cover meat with stock or water, and slow cook or braise for four-to-eight hours, until meat is completely tender. Add water, wine, or stock as necessary to replace any evaporated liquid. Season again.

Serve in a bowl with minced onions and a hunk of bread, which will absorb the mysterious broth and deliver it to your mouth, where no further adjustments will be necessary.

This dish won’t give a caffeine high or a wine buzz, but it provides a kick all of its own. It was, after all, the pursuit of a flavor fix along these lines that got me into coffee and wine to begin with.

Categories
Music Music Blog

Weekend Roundup 53: Agent Orange, Pujol, Ghastly

Pujol plays the HI-Tone on Saturday, February 27th.

Happy Friday and welcome to the 53rd edition of my Weekend Roundup. Here is everywhere you need to be this weekend:

Friday, February 26th.
Whitey Morgan and Cody Jinks, 8 p.m. at the New Daisy, $17-$23.

Weekend Roundup 53: Agent Orange, Pujol, Ghastly

Agent Orange, In The Whale, SVU, 9 p.m. at the Hi-Tone, $10. 

Weekend Roundup 53: Agent Orange, Pujol, Ghastly (2)

Ghost Town Blues Band, 9 p.m. at Lafayette’s Music Room. 

Robby Grant, 10 p.m. at Bar DKDC, $7.

Saturday, February 27th.
Pujol, China Gate, Small, 9 p.m. at the Hi-Tone, $10.

Weekend Roundup 53: Agent Orange, Pujol, Ghastly (4)

Elanor Tallie, 10 p.m. at Lafayette’s Music Room.

Ghastly, 10:30 p.m. at the New Daisy, $15.

Weekend Roundup 53: Agent Orange, Pujol, Ghastly (3)

Sunday, February 28th.
Marcella Simien, 10 p.m. at Lafayette’s Music Room.

Young Valley, The Tallahatchies 9 p.m. at the Hi-Tone, $7.

Weekend Roundup 53: Agent Orange, Pujol, Ghastly (5)

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

East Tapas’ Spinach Artichoke Spring Rolls

This one takes things up a notch. East Tapas’ spinach artichoke spring rolls ($6) is like spinach artichoke dip in a spring roll wrapper and served with a balsamic glaze.

The spring rolls are on the tapas section of the menu and are meant to be a small appetizer or snack. They were lightly fried, had a crunchy exterior, and a creamy interior. The balsamic glaze was sweet and went well with the smooth texture and creamy consistency of the spinach artichoke filling. I expected the dish to be heavy but it wasn’t. This is a dish I’m not sharing! I wanted more. 

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

“At Least One Republican Knows What He’s Talking About”

Ohio Governor John Kasich

Last night’s Republican Presidential debate was remarkable in that the CNN “moderators” did significantly less moderating than the kindly referee who “officiated” my 7-year-old grandson’s basketball game last Saturday (IC vs St. Louis), in which dribbling was considered optional, fouls were basically non-existent, and the small boys (whose equally small hands could only occasionally hold the basketball) ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. My grandson is certainly not the next Kobe Bryant (who played his last Memphis game here Wednesday night), but Ben had great fun running up and down the court, to no obvious purpose.

It occurred to me last night that this was exactly what the Republican Presidential Debate in Houston was all about. There was no kindly referee who recognized the participants’ flaws, no method in the madness. To mix metaphors shamelessly, it was all sound and fury signifying nothing.

The worst part was that the misguided morons running this CNN “debate” utterly ignored Dr. Ben Carson and 

Kenneth Neill

Gov. John Kasich. I confess that I have not been watching this particular circus closely over the past six (or is it nine?) ridiculous months. But now I’m paying attention; it is after all the actual year of the election. So why in the world would you have a debate with five candidates without carving five relatively equal chunks of time for each of them to speak?

In Carson’s case, his getting less face time was probably both an act of kindness and a relief to the candidate himself. To me, Dr. Carson always looks like he’s smoked a joint or two before the event to settle his nerves. I am not suggesting for a moment that the Doctor is a Dead Head. But one can have much bigger character flaws than that habit, a fact which all but one of the other “candidates” certainly demonstrate on a daily basis, and reaffirmed, big-time, last night, over two excruciating hours.

The one exception was/is Governor Kasich, an “establishment” guy to be sure, but one who last night, on the rare occasions he got to speak, seemed to know what he was talking about, to have experience doing what he talks about, and to have the sense to talk about the things he’s going to do, all of which in this 2016 Republican race passes for uncommon brilliance. But like Rodney Dangerfield, Kasich gets no respect. None whatsoever, none from Wolf Blitzer, and even less from the pea-brains who surround him.

Nevertheless, Kasich persevered last night when he could, at one point even jumping on a question that Blitzer had just handed on a plate to King Trump. As a noble royal should, the Donald quietly sat back and let the Ohio Governor speak his piece without interruption and nary a snide remark. Note that Kasich is the only one Trump never trashes, not out of politeness, of course, and not entirely because (at this point and maybe forever) Kasich is a single-digit non-factor. No, at least part of Trump’s civility towards the Ohio governor is this: the Donald’s real enemy (and he knows it) is logic. He knows he can fool all of the people some of the time; he can fool some of the people all of the time, but he can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Those are Abraham Lincoln’s words, of course, not mine, but they seem appropriate re. Donald Trump. He knows he’s in a race against time, he’s in a way better position than anyone else, and his superb jungle instinct tells him not to mess with that weird critter over there in the corner, the one who might blow his cover, until/unless it’s necessary. Fear of the unknown still retains a place in the jungle hierarchy, even at the best of times for predators.

Obviously, none of this does Kasich any good at the moment. But for the record, tonight at 5:30 p.m., you’ll find me at the Holiday Inn University on Central, where, yes, the Governor is appearing. Not sure if you need a reservation, but i kind of doubt the lines will be out into the street. There will be lines for certain in Millington Saturday night, where the Sweet Prince of New York City will be appearing. And that will be a real occasion.

So, I suspect, will be Kasich’s event this evening, on a decidedly more modest scale. I’ll listen tomorrow evening with relief to a Republican candidate presenting intelligent discourse on the issues, not all of which, of course, i will remotely agree with. But this will sure beat another night screaming at Wolf Blitzer on the television screen.

And if i possibly can, tonight I am going to shake Governor’s Kasich’s hand, and tell him (as a lifelong Democrat who’s unlikely to vote for him in November) that I came to the Holiday Inn just to listen to him for longer than 3.45 minutes. And, selfishly, I also want to be able to tell my great-grandchildren that once I had the pleasure of meeting perhaps the last sentient being ever to run for the Republican Presidential nomination.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Road Rage in Memphis

CREDIT: Carlos Oliveras Palomar | Dreamstime.com

Last night I was indulging in one of my favorite pastimes, watching compilations of road-rage fights on YouTube. It used to be that in a traffic-related fight, two guys would get out, maybe with a pipe or a bat, and duke it out. Now these guys go straight for the gun. It’s horrifying to watch some punk getting a well-deserved pounding from an outraged driver, but instead of manning up, they dive straight for the glove compartment. Now if you find yourself in a road-rage incident, the other person will just shoot your ass.

Carlos Oliveras Palomar | Dreamstime.com

I must confess that I’ve been afflicted with road rage for about 30 years or so, and there ain’t no cure for those boulevard blues. It begins during the daily obstacle course on city streets. Here’s a guy trying to make a left from the center lane. Here comes some fool barreling out of a fast food joint and pulling too far into the street so that you have to swerve quickly and pray someone’s not in the other lane. Here’s a tiny lady who can barely see over the steering wheel driving 25 mph during rush hour. And that guy that speeds past you, cuts over three lanes, and ends up at the same red light as you. They’re all just playing their parts assigned for that day to make driving a harrowing experience.

You would not believe the words that come out of my mouth, words that could never be used in any other setting. It usually begins as an irritant from observing another driver’s behavior. When something crucially stupid happens, I begin by saying, “You blanking blank. Idiot blankerblanker. Wake the blank up and drive, you blanking blankhole.” From there it only gets worse.

Once I was driving east on Peabody, and, as I drew near South Cooper Street, where the road dead-ends and splits either left or right, some knucklehead in front of me couldn’t pick a lane. I thought I’d help him by laying on the horn, but he flipped me a particularly vulgar looking bird. Infuriated, I did the old trick of moving my hand in a back and forth motion near my mouth and poking my cheek out with my tongue. Certain that my gesture was far more disgusting than his, he went south and I went north. I stopped in the old record store in the Poplar Plaza, and, while I was perusing the CDs, this scrawny-looking guy in overalls comes up to me and says, “You’re the guy that just told me to ‘blank a blank’ in the street out there.” Not wishing to disrupt anyone’s business, I took the gentlemanly approach and apologized. I told him that something inexplicable comes over me when I get behind the wheel of a car, but I’m really not that person. He seemed to accept my atonement and left. It was either that or throw down in the middle of the rhythm and blues racks. That’s how I learned to keep my vulgarities and hand gestures more discreet.

My wife, Melody, has refused to ride with me for several years now. I don’t mind if she wants to drive, but I’m not that great of a passenger either. I enjoy explaining the psychology of traffic. If she passes some massive SUV, I tell her to just watch. Psychologically, the other driver resents being passed by a smaller car and will invariably speed up. She also hates it when I stomp on the passenger’s side brakes. I have noticed, however, that she’ll occasionally cut loose with a tirade that could peel paint from a dry wall. I have to remind her that we don’t go for “blue” language.

Still, the horror is unending. The interstates have become endless ribbons of aggravation. Believe it or not, there was a time when long-haul truckers were considered the most courteous drivers on the road. They moved over to allow you to pass, and, if you made a pulling motion with your arm, they might even let you hear a little airhorn. No longer. Since the petroleum industry lobbyists have stopped all railway progress in this country, the highways are choked with big rigs, and the old Eisenhower expressway system is too obsolete to handle it.

That’s why I try not to complain when the old 5:15 a.m. train rolls through the center of town. I know that every boxcar is at least one less truck on the highway. Today’s truckers pass you at 80 miles an hour and blow your car off the road.

There was also a time when you could hitchhike on the interstate, and invariably a trucker would pick you up. I thought nothing of being dropped off at an exit ramp in Nashville and thumbing it to Knoxville. Even women once trusted truckers enough to hitchhike. I knew this musician who was around 5’4″, thinner than a dime, with long blonde hair flowing down his back. Once, he was hitching with his thumb out and his back to oncoming traffic when an 18-wheeler pulled over. My friend jumped into the cab revealing his mustache and sternum-length beard and said, “I bet you thought I was a girl.” The trucker answered, “Don’t matter. Imma f**k you anyway.”

If I were your president, I would begin building 21st-century super-highways exclusively for automobiles and leave the old interstate to the truckers. What would it take? Four more lanes? We need some auto-friendly roads and not these corkscrew flyovers that claim a life a week. And the next Congress should make drivers’ education courses mandatory. That would thin the herd from some of these damn fools out there, and you know who you are.

Just today, I saw some monster truck pull to a sudden stop behind me at a red light, and, when I looked into the rearview mirror, some slob was eating something out of a bowl with a spoon. I thought it must be ice cream, but he was eating it much too fast to avoid brain freeze. I assumed it was either ramen noodles or soup and said loudly, to no one, “You idiot blankblanker.”

Sometimes I just wish I had a giant yellow backhoe to cruise down the road, so when I saw someone driving like a selfish idiot bastard I could just crush their roofs and push them to the curb. Oh yeah, I saw that on YouTube too.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

The Witch

Every year around Halloween, I get a hankering for Hammer horror. Atmospheric films like The Gorgon or Christopher Lee’s Dracula, made before slasher pictures gave the genre a bloody sameness, have a certain pleasing gothic creepiness that transcends their screenplay and acting faults. The Witch, which won Robert Eggers a directing award at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, seems like it was created out of the Platonic ideal of a Hammer-period horror film, with all of the creep and none of the camp.

It begins with a family of five being expelled from an unnamed New England plantation that looks a lot like Salem circa 1690. The cause of the schism is some obscure doctrinal dispute between the family patriarch William (Ralph Ineson) and the town council of puritans led by the Governor (Julian Richings). Significantly, it is William who denounces the townspeople as being insufficiently pure, claiming his family are the only ones who practice true Christianity.

Ellie Grainger, Black Phillip the Satanic goat, and Lucas Dawson struggle to survive.

William takes his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie), daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), tween son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), elementary-aged twins Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson), and infant Samuel into the forest to build a new life for themselves where they can worship free from the corrupting influences of the world. But the woods they chose for their new home already has an inhabitant: a shapeshifting witch played in various forms by Bathsheba Garnett and Sarah Stephens.

A card at the end of the film notes that it was based on historical accounts of witchcraft trials from the late seventeenth century, when there weren’t any witches with magical powers, just women whom the patriarchy had deemed too unimportant to feed and who used the magical thinking of theology to justify getting rid of. But there’s no doubt black magic is real in the world of The Witch: No sooner has the family built their farm than the witch snatches baby Samuel in the midst of a peekaboo game with Thomasin, grinds him up, bathes in his innocent blood, and goes for a flight on her broomstick.

The family is grief-stricken, with the burden falling heaviest on the mother, Katherine, who struggles to stay upright as conditions on the farm worsen. The crops are failing, and the animals are either getting sick, or, in the case of the huge goat named Black Phillip, developing a Satanic mean streak. Suspicion falls on Thomasin, the beautiful young daughter who is coming of age and inadvertently tempting her little brother with lustful thoughts. Taylor-Joy is riveting as the noose tightens around her, causing herself to question her own innocence. The high point of her performance comes when, pressured by her father to give a false confession, she snaps and suggests that maybe the reason why his farm is failing and his kids are dying is that he’s an arrogant religious nut who sucks at farming and is generally unprepared for the harsh life of the frontier.

Anya Taylor-Joy as accused witch Thomasin

From the safe and rationalist point of view of the 21st century, that sounds like a pretty accurate description of the conditions surrounding the Salem witch trials, but The Witch’s point of view is stuck firmly in the puritanical 17th century, where witches are real and want to do the devil’s bidding by messing with good Christians. The Witch of the Woods sinks her talons deep in William and systematically deprives him of everything he holds dear. It’s an epic slow burn that makes flawless use of the film’s 93-minute running time. Like the ornate Hammer films of the early 1960s, the production design puts us in the characters’ world from the beginning, but Eggers is going for a strict realism that makes the magical elements more creepy and unnerving. The low-light photography of Jarin Blaschke, such as the extended sequence around a tense dinner table lit only by dripping, homemade candles, takes a page from Kubrick’s groundbreaking work on Barry Lyndon and transforms the domestic scene into a Dutch Masters painting.

The controlled, almost serene pacing of The Witch goes against the grain of contemporary horror, but, taken with work like last year’s instant classic It Follows, it seems to point toward a new subgenre of arthouse horror. For fans of the creepy, it’s the year’s first must-see movie.

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Music Music Features

Agent Orange at the Hi-Tone

Agent Orange bring their classic West Coast punk to the Hi-Tone this Friday night, alongside In the Whale and locals SVU. Formed in 1979 in the boom of the Southern California punk scene, the band was one of the first to mix hardcore punk with surf guitar licks, proving that while you didn’t have to know how to play your instrument to gain notoriety (see the Germs), it certainly didn’t hurt. The original lineup that cranked out the band’s best LP did so at an incredibly young age, and one of the most impressive aspects of Living in Darkness is the lyrics. The album’s title track perfectly captures the spirit of the early punk mentality, but while most first-wave California punk songs about defying authority usually involve some sort of violent element, Agent Orange took a more philosophical approach to their disdain for society. Their song “Bloodstains” is one of THE California punk classics, and ranks right alongside any other hit from that era. But that was all very long ago at this point. What has the band been up to since then?

Agent Orange

The answer is not a lot. After releasing Living in Darkness on Posh Boy Records (Black Flag, Adolescents, JFA) the band didn’t release another record until 1986, when they teamed up with Enigma Records for This Is the Voice. Fast forward another 10 years and Virtually Indestructible was released, making it one of the last times the band would release an album of all new material. While punk rock and especially hardcore are considered a young person’s game, Agent Orange are still touring on the strength of their first album, a classic that holds as much resonance today as it did over 30 years ago when it was first released. The show is 18 and up.

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Sports Tiger Blue

#24 SMU 69, Tigers 62

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

“We battled. We competed. But we didn’t execute down the stretch. I was proud of our young men. We came up short.”

Memphis coach Josh Pastner’s opening remarks in tonight’s postgame press conference could be applied to about 10 of his team’s 13 losses to date. Facing the team many still feel is the American Athletic Conference’s top team, the U of M led — thanks to a Jake McDowell layup — with less than nine minutes to play. But then there’s that finishing part. Missed free throws, turnovers, and an ill-advised heave with a minute to go all contributed to the Mustangs securing their second straight season-sweep of the Tigers.

After being held scoreless in the first half, SMU point guard Nic Moore — the front-runner for AAC Player of the Year — scored 12 points in the second half, including a three-pointer as he was falling out of bounds near the end of the shot clock that tied the score at 51. “That ball wound up in Nic’s hands by accident,” said Pastner. “We just didn’t get any breaks. It’s been like that all year long. That kind of got him going. I thought we did a good job on him for the most part.”

Larry Kuzniewski

Ricky Tarrant Jr.


Ricky Tarrant Jr. had a chance to tie the game at 63 with 1:37 to play but missed the first of two free throws. Down 63-62 with a minute to go, freshman guard Jeremiah Martin attempted a three-pointer from the left corner that didn’t so much as hit the rim. Pastner was trying to call timeout as the shot was taken, but no player on the floor saw the signal in time.

Moore converted a floater on the Mustangs’ next possesion to extend the lead to three and Dedric Lawson turned the ball over as he drove into the lane looking for an open teammate. Lawson’s ensuing foul on Sterling Brown at the other end of the floor was ruled intentional, giving SMU both the free throws and possession of the ball. Game over.

“I don’t do moral victories,” said a disconsolate Avery Woodson. “I don’t care if it’s the number-one team in the country and we lose by one. It’s a loss. It’s tough, the ball not bouncing our way all year.” Woodson hit two of six three-pointers and scored eight points, but missed his only two free throws. Overall, the Tigers missed nine of 22 shots from the charity stripe.

Lawson led Memphis with 18 points but, with only four rebounds, saw his streak of games with double-doubles end at five. Senior Shaq Goodwin was limited to 22 minutes by foul trouble and scored only eight points. Tarrant scored 15 and dished out seven assists.

“The law of averages has not worked in our favor,” said Pastner. “Maybe it will Sunday. Hopefully it will in the conference tournament. If the right Memphis team shows up, we can win three games in the conference tournament. We’ve been hot and cold all year. We’ve practiced well; our energy was great. How we practice has not been how we play, and usually that’s a correlation.”

SMU outscored the Tigers 42-22 inside and shot 49 percent for the game, again exposing a Tiger defense that at one point ranked near the top of the AAC.

The Tigers, now 15-13,  will play their home finale — Senior Day — Sunday afternoon against Tulsa. Tip-off at FedExForum is scheduled for 3 p.m.