Poetry Express: Why Do Some Poems Take Up More Space Than They Should?

The Paris Review emails me a daily poem.  Some of them I get but many of them I don’t.  It’s not that I don’t like poetry but sometimes it seems that people are trying to hard to be obscure or academic.  

Perhaps I’m too plebian. I listen to hip-hop and can find poetry there in the rhythm, placement,   irony, and inventive use of  common memes.  That’s not to say I could make a steady diet of it or that it’s  all so wonderfully poetic.

 I am put off by poems that make use of the empty white space on the page.   Like if there’s some sensation of flight and the words of the poem are placed so as to configure a bird or a plane.  Or maybe a cat figure forms the pattern for word placement. 

Fact is, I don’t need it.  If the image is expressed  , I can imagine the cat myself.  Maybe a different cat, maybe a better one. 

 So in the latest  poem sent to me, there are images of a scorpion.  I’ve seen scorpions. If you say scorpion, I see them in my mind’s eye. I don’t need to see the words slithering (yes, I know scorpions don’t ‘slither’)  on the page as they do in “ Monsoon by Eduardo C. Corral: 

Monsoon by Eduardo C. Corral Issue no. 228 (Spring 2019) Scores                of scorpions                                  honey-bright scorpions                   twist counter-                                        clockwise around my body                                     saw-toothed pincers shred                   my jeans & shirt                                           when I’m stripped completely                   all but two                                        scorpions stop clattering                   they scramble up                                        my left arm & shoulder                   press tack-                                        sharp legs against the arteries                   in my neck                                        I slowly reach for them                      expect a few                                           bloody sparks but instead                   of scorpions                                        my thumb troubles                   two warm letters                                        initials his initials                the scorpions                                        rattle twist clock-                   wise this time                                        saw-toothed pincers cut                   into my skin                                        I refuse I refuse                   to speak his name                                        the scorpions honey-bright                   come to a halt                                     raise their tails a bead of poison                glints on the tip                                     of each stinger the small bones                   in my tongue                                           break it starts                      to rain

Short Storyland: "Witness" by Jamel Brinkley

Jamel Brinkley

Perusing Twitter I saw someone posted a tweet complaining of disappointment endings to short stories.  I thought it was fair insight as I think of the short stories of Ernest Hemingway and some other writers of the genre.  Well, it's not a genre exactly -- well anyway, I found a modern short story in Paris Review that had a good ending.  The title and writer are shown above.  So what's the story?

In its most basic sense, it's about Bernice, Dove, and the narrator.  The narrator is Bernice's sister -- she lives in a tiny New  York City apartment.  Her brother, the narrator and writer presumably, comes from somewhere small to make it in the big city like his sister.  He has to sleep on the couch; there's only one bedroom of course.   Narrator can't find a job, not until the end, but that's only a side trip.  

The basic theme of the story is that brother and sister get alone just fine until Bernice meets a "dude" named Dove who hustles  a living as a DJ.  Bernice is a bit frivolous, given over to following her impulses.  Dove has a certain kind of mouth move that appeals to her and she marries him.  Yeah, that makes three in a tiny NYC apartment. 

Okay so,  if this short story is any indication, Jamel Brinkley is a talented writer who can get into your head with his internal reckonings.  He and his sister love and understand each other in a kind of intimate Frannie and Zoey way, with lots of inside humor, and crackling wit.  

Narrator looks down on Dove and with some reason. He's a vapid shallow character who doesn't have the depth of understanding that Bernice needs.   You do wonder why she married him.  The only thing I can figure is that she's a bit loose in her associations, and maybe she's become desperate to marry.  She has some kind of illness which comes into play later.   Tiny apartment also  plays a part as the writer/narrator reviles poor Dove every chance he gets.

What makes it particularly sad is the Dove is the kind of guy who sometimes doesn't understand he's being whipped.   Narrator seems to think that perhaps he's not whipping Dove hard enough to make an impression.  Narrator exhibits a persistent and increasing cruelty to Dove right up to the end of the story when Bernice becomes ill and dies. 

It's only at that point that Dove understands how deeply reviled he is, not only by the narrator/writer, but also by the mother of Bernice and her brother.  

The mother appears only intermittently;  there's no mention of a father.   I get the impression of a hard childhood somewhere far uptown.  I'm guessing her irrationality, wild accusations, and need to blame someone for her daughter's death serves to explain narrator/writer's cruel streak but who knows?

There's a slight racial component to the story but it's not preachy or didactic and it's really not about that so much as it is about who the main characters are, what they think, what they feel.  

Okay so back to the tweet about insufficient unsatisfying endings.  This one has Dove not going to Bernice's funeral.  There's a final encounter where narrator/writer "reaches out" to Dove, inviting him back to the apartment to get his crates of vinyl records.  

There's no great battle climax and that's to the good, just the  steady quiet decline of relationships that should have been better from the get-go and gradually got worse. 

First They Come for the Symbols: Fight over Columbus Statue in South Philly's Marconi Park

The Antifa Taliban who are everywhere shouting at the top of their lungs for the defunding of police departments should take a look at South Philadelphia where two groups of demonstrators clashed over a statue of Christopher Columbus who sailed  for Spain and made a pathway to the New World. 

The city of Philadelphia had already taken down a statue of former mayor Frank Rizzo, a staunch and strong-armed law and order man.   Columbus statues were recently toppled or taken down in Camden, NJ and in Wilmington, Delaware.  Now there were protestors demanding that the Christopher Columbus statue in South Philadelphia’s Marconi Park     be taken down.

 Only problem was that surrounding the statue was a determined crowd of  South Philadelphians who   want to keep the statue where it has been for decades. When the anti-Columbus crowd grew increasingly frustrated at not being able to get near enough to topple the statue or vandalize it, they  surged forward and were met with. . . well, shell I say overzealous indignation? 

Yes, well a few of the antifa-BLM demonstrators did get roughed up, none badly, perhaps a bit of South Philly detuning.  The news here is not protest but that there were present at Marconi Park an alleged forty police officers who, following directives from on high,  did not interfere with the rude exchange of opinion. 

   There was one chubby fellow crying that the police “did nothing” and “should have helped us” and so forth.  There was a young female college student who also testified to the lack of action on the part of the police.  But while Columbus’ defenders were as angry  and vocal as the madding crowd, it was a minor dustup. The conflict was about  as   vigorous as a schoolyard fight amongst third graders. 

Still, this nameless naïve person whom shall be referred to as “Chubby Boy” or perhaps “Chubby White Nerd” was absolutely astonished he got the bum’s rush by a Columbus defender.  He should really bring his outrage to the mayors of at least a dozen cities who are calling or taking calls for  the abolishment and/or “defunding” of police departments a la CHAZ – the Seattle looney-bin acreage where cops abandoned their precinct under orders from the Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan.  The message of the official panderers like Durkan is “don’t escalate” and those were the orders also given by some unnamed official in Philadelphia. But apparently following even those instructions, the after-market quarterbacking resulted in one police leader being fired. 

The hypocrisy is fairly typical of the “defund” crowd.  They don’t support police until they need them. And when someone else does need them they do their best to hinder officers from doing their job. 

Yes, we know there are some bad actors among   police ranks but overall those are statistically insignificant. Most American cops are good-willing, of good characters, and devoted to keeping people like Chubby Boy (mentioned above) safe.   Anyone who doesn't understand this should try their antics and complaints in other countries -- Argentina, Russia maybe? See what happens when you throw bricks or paint on a cop.

Surprising as it may be, there are still people with a deeper understanding of the unusual challenges and hurdles police face today .  

You can read about those people and other news here: https://6abc.cm/2YCK2jy

I, Anna – An Underappreciated Film starring Charlotte Rampling and Gabriel Byrne

What it is. . . a film review

The title of this film should be a clue this is not a fast-paced detective thriller, but more of a character study.   The film hinges entirely on the Anna character, and who better to reflect the emotional nuances than Charlotte Rampling. 

Anna is a gentile woman too young to give up living and too old to easily fit in to the cruel world she’s lost in.  As a lost woman, her life is a mix of fact and fantasy, with loneliness being the predominant theme. Her eyes, her reticence, her elegant figure convey only a small part of her mystery.  You find out slowly, as if by drip torture, that she’s being crushed by traumas of her own making.

We meet her first in one of those meet and mingle affairs held for lonely middle-aged people without partners, a scene that is at once depressing  and pitiful.  In an early sequuence, the cinematographer cuts to snap profiles of battered people looking for human companionship in a dreary human landscape.  A bull-headed man has dandruff on his shoulders.  A skinny would-be prospect is missing more teeth than a two year old.  For another man, it’s all about all-too-eager serial sex with the presumption that Anna is there for the same reason.  Lots of people, no prospects.

I can’t say whether Anna’s social encounters are more or less depressing than today’s computerized speed dating and sex delivery services but  one of Anna’s problems is that she outclasses just about everyone at the ‘party,’ as the group meetings are termed by the hotel hosts.   Leaving the hotel she brushes by Detective Chief Inspector Bernie Reid, another lost and lonely soul who has recently separated from his wife. The detective becomes infatuated, finds in Anna’s remote personality some semblance of his own. 

So far as genre goes, people are calling it ‘film noir,’ but though dark shadows are ever present in the film style, that seems more convenient that describing what it really is.  There is a story arc – a murder in the beginning and the detective ferreting out the killer in the end — but the entanglements are interesting and often excruciating.  I would acknowledge that the ‘noir’ description fits   murder victim George Stone, a peach of a man who violently forces fellatio on Anna and otherwise brutalizes her. 

The story develops in a sufficiently mysterious way that doesn’t flinch at large and small telltale signs of a woman falling apart. The thing about Anna is that the more she falls apart the more the story comes together. It’s all pretty clear at the end, and there’s even a little Faulkneresque scene   (A Rose for Emily) toward the end where we get a peek into the closed off baby’s room.  There are serious cracks in the walls of Anna’s mind.

So my hit on it is that the film is largely unappreciated as the artistic tight piece that it is.  It’s not a film of fuzzy warm characters the Hollywood formula demands you must relate to.  Though it’s not overly highbrow,  I would recommend it to people of an artistic persuasion who are fond of fine acting, and from the minor characters as well.  Anna has a sort of broken elegance about her that makes you worry that, if you would take your eyes off the road for just a split second, you could fall as far and as fast as Anna does. 

Tessa Majors Murder: Going for the Match in DNA and Other Questions

UPDATE:  Tessa Majors was 18, just starting out at NYC's Barnard College/Columbia University when she was confronted by three individuals  in Morningside Park, just a stone's throw from the college.  One of the three handed a knife to the youth who stabbed her. One of the saddest and most pathetic videos you will ever see is when Tessa, bleeding from the knife wounds, stumbles up a long flight of concrete stairs to seek help.  The courageous young woman makes it to the top, just a few steps from the college, collapses and dies there.  Today,  sixteen-year-old Luchiano Lewis, who confessed to participating in the crime, was given a sentence of nine years to life. He was fourteen at the time the crime was committed. A second youth is already serving a sentence with a third still awaiting trial. 

Everyone knows that the  1989 Central Park 5 murder case has made investigators proceed with an abundance of caution in the similarly  high-profile murder case of victim Tessa Majors. Everyone except the morons who sent racist robocalls to Barnard University personnel knows that white adolescents have committed similar crimes, and for similar reasons. 

But let’s not mix social activism with criminal investigation in the murder of the first year Barnard College student stabbed to death in New York City’s Morningside Park on December 11.  Tessa and her family cry out for justice which just happens to involve a thirteen year old and two fourteen year olds, one of whom (allegedly, to use the appropriate legal terminology of innocent until proven guilty) stabbed and slashed Tessa Majors to death. 

Of course there are people observing and participating in the proceedings who do not want the responsible parties to be found out and, if they are found out, to be subject to the penal codes which, under normal circumstances,   apply equally to everyone, regardless of color, creed,and the rest of all that.  Below, you will see previously published material about the crime as it happened in December of 2019

Defense Attorney Hannah Kaplan would be happy to see her thirteen year old client go scott-free even though he’s admitted being present at the murder scene,   witnessing the fatal attack, and picking up a knife and handing it to one of the other suspects.  While Kaplan and others are doing what defense lawyers always do — play upon suspicions of police misconduct — it’s a good bet that the thirteen year old is on video, as are the two fourteen year olds.  It’s kind of hard to deny you were somewhere else if you’re on video where a murder is committed. 

Of the fourteen year olds, one was interviewed (with his lawyer and guardian) and, owing to the kindness and caution of the police department, released.  The other fourteen year old was believed to have fled south but was in fact found Thursday in the Bronx apartment of a relative.  According to several news sources (NYT for instance), the boy’s relatives were planning to shelter him until a bite wound on his finger healed. 

The notion that Tessa Majors fought back against her attacker(s) by biting comes from the thirteen year old’s confession and description of events. If the news reports have it right, that thirteen year old describes seeing the feather fly out of Tessa Majors’ jacket as she was being repeatedly stabbed and slashed.

But here are a few things I don’t know:

The New York Times and other news outlets often report that two assailants grabbed Tessa from behind, and that one of them reached into her pocket to grab a “plastic bag.”  The “plastic bag” term has appeared in several articles.  Could it just as easily have been “plastic purse” or “plastic wallet?”  Was Tessa carrying around in her pocket an empty Ziplock baggie? No problem there, just wondering.  I always keep a spare plastic bag in my pocket as I’m wandering about. But if it’s true, as one of Tessa’s school friends has it, that Tessa had gone to Morningside Park to buy marijuana, then it should be part of the investigation to determine whether other persons had been near and if somehow, perhaps inadvertently, such persons were involved in activities surrounding the murder.  Such persons, if they do exist, might even provide additional witness information.

I’m puzzled also by the testimony of the thirteen year old first taken into custody.  He says he picked up a knife dropped by one of the two fourteen year olds and handed it to one of the fourteen year olds. This is repeatedly and routinely mentioned in most news stories of the attack.  Can we assume that someone is shown on video picking up the knife and handing it off? But more importantly, how did it happen to be dropped?  Did it drop from a pocket or a hand?  Was it the murder weapon or just a spare knife kept around just for fun?  Where is the knife now?  

So with New York Legal Aid, Hannah Kaplan, and other fantasists attempting to shift focus and blame onto the police department handling of the interviews, investigating authorities are playing it smart by going for the DNA match.

 According to the NYT, forensics has gone over clothing and even the inside of Tessa Majors’ mouth to see what kind of DNA found there would match with DNA from all three of the ‘boys,’ but most especially the one who did the stabbing.  A judge has cleared the warrant for obtaining DNA samples from the most likely of the fourteen year olds to have killed Tessa.

Tessa Majors Murder: Blame the Police is Common Defense Strategy

It’s predictable enough.   When the facts are in your favor, you pound the facts.   When the facts are not in your favor, you pound the police officers involved in the investigation. 

It’s old news right now (as things go today) that the lawyer for the thirteen year old arrested in connection with the murder of Tessa Majors has launched a smear campaign against Wilfredo  Acevedo, a detective who interviewed and obtained the boy’s admission to  having gone to Morningside Park with his friends with the express purpose of robbing someone.  

They passed up on a male victim and then decided on Tessa Majors, a first year student at Barnard.  The thirteen year old admitted to being present at the stabbing-slashing murder, picking up a knife and handing it to teen who struck the fatal blows,  and provided a horrific detailed narrative about how the murder was committed. 

With few options, Defense attorney Hannah Kaplan influenceD news media to write smashing 20-point headlines about  how Acevedo was sued   times in   unconnected cases.  I find it amazing that so many news organizations, absent anything real to report, went with the story and were quite willing to smear the detective.

But Kapan’s wave of routine anti-cop strategy has already splashed harmlessly ashore.  While liberal media enjoyed a short feeding frenzy, I was rather impressed that CNN didn’t jump face forward into that sinkhole and is   reporting the words of New York’s Police Commissioner: 

New York Police Department Commissioner Dermot Shea said Detective Wilfredo Acevedo has never been found to have made a single false statement or falsely arrested anyone and touted his exemplary record of service.

The police union president put it more bluntly, calling out Hanna Kaplan for using a "commonly used strategy employed by defense attorneys" to undermine investigations.  And for the record, Police Commisisoner Shea cites Acevedo’s outstanding record as a police investigator:

"The detective singled out here has made 237 arrests including 93 felony arrests removing dangerous criminals from our streets. He has been recognized with 24 department medals. He has never been found to have made a single false statement or falsely arrested anyone by either the Department, the (Civilian Complaint Review Board), any Civil Court or District Attorney."

  I guess since Acevedo is Hispanic,  defense lawyer Hannah Kaplan was probably frustrated that she couldn’t play the race card along with her other attempts to poison the jury pool.  It was smart for the police, in the early going, not to identify the assailants as persons of color, leaving open the possibility which occurred to me and others — that perhaps the assailants were white thugs.  Remove all phony justifications for murder and what do you have?  Just what it looks like — some   young, very dangerous, very vicious punks who wanted to find easy prey.

So where is this case at right now?  Frankly, it’s only the police who might have the answer, though they have to be a bit frustrated by sixth amendment protections against an accused. 

Here’s the short brief about where things stand:

·       Police have already questioned another teen implicated by the thirteen year old and didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. He was let go as the law requires. The only evidence announced so far is a video that reportedly shows the attack, and the eyewitness account of the thirteen-year-old which is self-serving.  Neither the thirteen-year old nor the released fourteen year old are seen stabbing Tessa Majors.   

·       Another fourteen year old, whose picture is shown above, is being sought as the one who stabbed and slashed Tessa Majors to death.  It is believed that he has left New York and traveled down south to hide among family connections.  Being fourteen, this person does not have a driver’s license and so it’s logical to believe he is being abetted as a fugitive by friends and/or relatives.  

Tessa Majors Murder: Lots of Guessing, Few Results

      The media seems to like this picture of Tessa Majors. Her brightness bespeaks the tragedy. . .

I’d been following the Tessa Majors story since it began. It is a sensational case, I can’t help that — a talented and accomplished young woman in her first year at a prestigious New York City College.  The major NY and other media is all over the story, often with unreliable results.

Some reports said Tessa had gone to the park for a nighttime jog.  Others said she was going for a walk.  An ill-thought out remark by one police union official offended the murder victim’s family when he said Tessa had gone down into the park to buy marijuana.  According to the New York Post, this speculation came from a “college friend of the victim.”

  Tessa’s parents and others were quick to point out Mullin’s comment reflected a blame-the-victim mentality.  True or not, the comment should never have been made. Mullins issued a quick and warranted apology.

 The newest public characterization of this horrible murder is that Tessa fought back, biting one of her assailant’s finger.  This information may or may not have come from the 13 year old who is in custody.  Wouldn’t this also be interpreted by some as a blame-the-victim trope?  Doesn’t it send the message that fighting back against muggers could get you killed?

 The thirteen year old currently in custody appears in a video which his lawyer touts to make the case that the thirteen-year-old (named in the NY Post) did not stab the victim but handed the knife to the teen who did.  Later it emerged that one of the assailants dropped a knife.  The thirteen-year-old picked it up and handed it back to the assailant who repeatedly stabbed Tessa, one blow striking under her armpit and reaching her heart.   

I have many questions.  The biggest one is this:  Why did the ‘boys’ who robbed Tessa Majors have to kill her?  They could have robbed Tessa and vanished into the city as they’d likely done before.  I can't help but wonder if too many public political attacks on color, class and privilege had contributed to the vicious mindsets of the young teen perpetrators.

Missing “The Wire” : TV Déjà vu All Over Again

Andre Royo as "Bubbles"


After watching so many episodes of “The Wire,” it’s been a little difficult for me to get into one of its verisimilitudes.   Starz TV  “Power” has its moments and some fine acting but once you get hooked on realistic portrayals “The Wire” is hard to beat.


It’s not for the faint of heart, of course. The show is determined to reveal life as it is in parts of Baltimore and other American cities and not the FCC sanitized version.    Baltimore was a good choice for the show because it’s a port city. Boatloads of cargo come in on container ships to be unloaded by men and machines.  


The old guys exaggerate their experiences of the ‘good old days’ when things were tough and real men wearing only tee-shirts in zero degree weather, unlike the 'pussies' of the modern world, could lift whole shipping containers  with one hand while fighting off pirates with the other.  


The longshoremen drink and swear a lot when they’re not grousing about the shrinking job opportunities.  We see how it is on the loading-unloading docks where nepotism rules and the foreman’s son Ziggy is somewhat of an embarrassment when he loses an entire ‘hot’ shipping container.    Okay, Ziggy is kind of a coglione, but in a show with such an undertow you need one or two of those to lighten up.


The focus on gritty repartee and private parts is part of the attraction though guys like Ziggy don’t know when to keep things zipped up.  That ‘zipped up’ is in the literal sense, by the way. There’s a scene where   Ziggy climbs up on the bar, unzips his pants and lets it all hang out.  

What is Justice in the Amber Guyger Murder Trial?

Defendant Amber Guyger.  Inset:  Botham Jean

I’d heard about this case some time ago and rushed to judgment.  If you asked me about it then, I would have sounded like the prosecutor. Police officer Amber Guyger comes home from work, parks on the wrong floor of the parking garage, goes to a fourth floor apartment instead of her own third floor apartment and shoots dead the man who lives there.  You couldn’t believe such a thing was a mistake.  This was a murder.

Only recently did I pay attention to the story.  CBSN and other news outlets televised some of the trial.  I also read several of the articles about it.  Now I don’t know what I think.   There are times when the very nature of justice is called into question and must be defined again.  This is one of those times.

First of all, it’s an incomprehensible horror for the man, his family, and the community. The people who loved him should not have to suffer this.  The man should be alive.    I understand the family would be bitter. I understand how they would file a federal lawsuit against Dallas.  

 Amber Guyger got fired about two weeks after the shooting happened.   Then she was charged with manslaughter, which   seems to fit.  But then the case is sent to a grand jury which decides a murder charge is the apt and only way forward.   Is that a political decision?

Murder means you want to kill.  Murder is something you run away from.  Amber Guyger didn’t run away as we know from her anguished phone call to the dispatcher at her Dallas precinct.  Clearly hysterical, she pieces it together as well as she can.  Listen to the audio and you’ll see she flipped her bird, struggling to hold herself together, desperate to get fellow cops on the scene. 

  I understand from reading that     Botham Jean was still alive while Amber was on the phone and waiting for police and ambulance to arrive. Does anyone think she was capable of giving mouth to mouth resuscitation when Jean took one through the heart?   She did the only thing she could do — she lost her shit and begged for help. 

What seemed like an open and shut case of manslaughter has now become very different with this murder charge.  I don’t want to comment further but will discuss various aspects of the case as things unfold.

"The Americans" never gets old: 1st Episode of Season 5 w/ Keri Russell & Matthew Rhys

There is an old  KGB joke which shows the cynicism that pervaded all aspects of Soviet Communism:  “ A guy goes into a food market and asks: “Don’t you have any meat?” Market owner replies: “We don’t have any fish. The market that doesn’t have any meat is across the street.”

If you haven't watched "The Americans" before you should.  It's the kind of television that never gets old.  We are not in the 1980s any more.  Or are we?

In the  First Episode of Season Five of "The Americans,"  there was a new character named Tuan.’ Tuan  is a young Vietnamese KGB trainee posted with Soviet spies Philip and Elizabeth Jennings as their adopted son. He’s hard-core, a blind believer in the Soviet system, gung-ho to the point that even Elizabeth can hardly stand his psychotic utterings at the dinner table.  One astonished gaping look from Elizabeth  says it all. The kid is too whacked even by   KGB standards.

It’s not as if American espionage agents were playing softball.   The CIA has hired a dissident Russian working for the  U.S. to develop a strain of fungus that will destroy the Soviet Union’s wheat crop.   That’s a bit of overkill. The failure of the Soviet socialist-communist system is evident in filmed food lines, bare supermarket shelves, rotting food, tractors mired in mud up to the hubcaps.

The dissident scientist Alexei in  “The Americans”   has a great deal of enthusiasm for America, its freedom and plenty.   He criticizes  his home country while unwitting talking to Soviet spy Philip, who is disguised as an airline pilot.“Good thing you don’t work for Aeroflot. Their planes crash all the time. They’re dirty. You want food you have to stand in line for hours.  In Russia, you must share toilets, pay bribes. Awful country.”   

The Americans is never without humor, though it’s often of the droll, mordant kind. Stan Beeman is a Steven Martin style ‘lonely guy’ FBI agent when he pops in on the Jennings with a sixpack of beer.  Neighborly chit-chat.

Stan’s been isolated too long and divorced not long enough. He bores a wry Phillip (Matthew Rhys,  great actor, and real life husband of Keri Russell)  with a non-eventful tale about a woman he’s seen at the gym. “I met a woman,” he tells Phillip. To ordinary mortals, this would mean he has possibilities. To nerdish Stan however, it means the woman on the treadmill next to him smiled at him while walking away.  

But the primary concern of the Soviet spies  is to get a sample of a biological warfare agent developed at an FBI lab in Virginia.  The Lassa virus had accidentally killed one of the embedded Soviet agents and it’s up to Elizabeth and Philip to dig up his body to get another sample.    It’s not going to be easy.  The CIA secretly buried  the toxic foreign agent in a sealed plastic overcoat inside a metal box buried fifteen feet deep in Fort Dietrich’s   back yard.

A team of agents, under the guidance of Philip and Elizabeth, sap the perimeter of the American compound and beginning digging. And digging. And still more digging. It’s pretty hard to explain how about 20 minutes of film digging can make for exciting TV but it does. 

You smell the dirt in more ways than one. The KGB team digs up the stinking body of their dead agent, cuts a chunk of his flesh out for transport back to Moscow.  One of the KGB team members slips off the ladder and cuts his wrist during the process. This exposes him to the Lassa virus. He panics,knows he’s going to die.   Elizabeth calmly reassures him that everything’s going to be all right, don’t worry, be calm.  When the man calmsdown, Elizabeth pulls a pistol and  shoots him in the head. Dead fall into the hole.

The ends justify the means. It’s brutal.  

Welcome to the Rileys: James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, and Melissa Leo Shine

“Welcome to the Rileys” presents a very American-style movie which seems almost from a different era.  It kinda’ is, considering  that in the speed-of-light movement of media in 2019,  a film from 2010  seems light years behind the times.  

In the   incessant parade of Marvel Comics inspired  sequels, prequels, and whatever other money-drubbing special effects   eyeball candy is drummed into audiences, “Welcome to the Rileys” is a window to a world of loss, patience, compassion, and possibly redemption. 

The independent film project is so archaic that it relies on superb acting by the late James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, and Melissa Leo to make its story engaging.  Nothing explodes, rockets into the air, crashes (unless you count human ones), or bleeds profusely (except when one of Mallory’s tricks smacks her around because he’s not happy with the sexual services she’s expected to provide),    “He tried to stick it up my ass,” she tells Doug, who is glad there is one vice Mallory does refuse to engage in.

Doug is the proprietor of a successful plumbing supply chain.  Lois is his wife.  And ‘Mallory’ (who goes by several aka(s) is a . . . .

1)     teen-age prostitute

2)     stripper

3)     orphan runaway from Florida

4)     substitute daughter to fill an empty space

There’s a lot of concentrated dissonance in the lives of Lois and Doug.  Since the death of their daughter Emily in a car accident, the couple has been locked into separate emotional boxes.  Lois has not left the house for years, not even to walk down her driveway to the mailbox.  Doug bides his time through business and an ongoing affair with a black waitress at a local diner.

It’s when Doug goes to a plumbers convention in New Orleans that he meets Mallory in a strip club where he’s gone to hide away from his obtuse conventioneer pals.  He refuses everything she offers beginning with a lap dance, and then graduating to just about everything else.  “Except anal, I don’t do anal,” Mallory says.   

It takes her a good long time to realize Doug is a real live human being and a generous one to boot.  Mallory is quite a beautiful mess with her tangle of hair, sharp features, halting bird-of-prey eyes darting around.  There are a couple of camera shots where you realize Doug may be a better man than you are.   Not having seen Kirsten Stewart in those fantasy flicks, I wondered if that was a body double climbing onto Doug’s lap in the seedy private room of the strip club. Yikes, there was one shot where I’d definitely lose my religion — but not to digress.

  Doug decides to take up permanent residence in the claptrap rooms where Mallory lives.  He calls wife Lois to tell her he won’t be home for a while.  She’s so numb with shock and loss that it hardly registers.  Weeks pass and finally Lois crashes out of her torpor and goes to look for her husband.   It’s all new to her – getting into the car, actually driving, rediscovering the outside world — but at least it’s a beginning.  Or it could be an ending the way she drives, confusing reverse for a forward gear.  So then you have Lois, Doug, and Mallory living together in a ramshackle apartment in a rundown part of New Orleans.

Of humor there are only short precise snatches.  Because it’s all very sad and heartbreaking.  It’s not the kind of pain you can easily shuck off.  It’s a familiar kind of pain that has you caring fopr Doug, and Lois, and Mallory.

 

Okay, so  being the discriminating film watcher that you are, and having seen some of this in RL, you know that Mallory (and it could be any drug addict, child prostitute, teen alcoholic, or serial loser in your life circle) cannot suddenly change into that wholesome mid-western fairy princess to fill that huge hole in the lives of Doug and Lois.

But she can deliver on a ray of hope.  If the film stumbled in a few spots, you quickly forgot about it, so engaging were the actors, and so human the story. 

Iran’s Government : iToday’s ‘Evil Empire.’

“Either the Trump administration is trying to goad Iran into war or a war could come by accident because of the administration’s reckless policies,” declared former Obama official Wendy Sherman Wednesday, after the State Department withdrew personnel from Iraq.

That’s from the Wall Street Journal today.  That and other Democrat ‘leaders’ from the Obama administration are seeking political advantage in 2020 by positioning themselves as peace-seeking opposition candidates. 

Okay, I get the politics but not at my expense and not at the expense of national security.  Neither at the expense of the cash millions that   Obama gave to the Iranians with a planeload of U.S. dollars paid for the 2015 Nuclear Iran Deal.

You’d almost think Obama official Wendy Sherman had sat down with the mullahs for  tea and sympathy.   Considering that Dems were raising issues of ‘collusion’ for talking to Russians,  it would seem that Wendy Sherman, Obama, and wobbly old 30s socialist Bernie Sanders would be a little more cautious about giving encouragement and succor to the enemy. 

Bernie Sander’s latest hymn to Iran Mullahs is that  recent U.S. actions to protect American troops, American, Arab, and European interests in the region as “provocations on the part of the United States against Iran.”

Iranians have had several rebellions against their militant Islamist leaders.  Some   remember (perhaps from reading western books)  the freedom once had before the 1979 Iranian revolution with its 444 day brutal capture, torture, and display of American hostages.  

Don’t doubt that the Iranian terrorist militias (al quds forces) are responsible for the horrors of Yemen, recent violent attacks on four ships, an attempted assassination of a Saudi official in Washington D.C. and  much more. 

Iran’s Government is at the heart of today’s ‘Evil Empire.’  

Beware the Writer's Group : John Updike is Watching from Above

Most people realize that some writer's groups are helpful whereas others may be toxic.  Often there is a mix of toxicity and helpfulness.  In my own group, there are people whom I listen to and others whom I discount the minutes their lips begin to move.  Too many people are in the latter category though I have to admit sometimes even that amuses me.

One of the dumbest criticisms I've heard in my group is that the writer (whomever is being reviewed) should use a simpler or less descriptive word than the one used. This is absolutely insane.  I'm currently in a throwback reading mood and going through a very clever and witty novel by John Updike (Bech at Bay).  I shudder to imagine his ghost sitting at our round table.

This dumbing down in my group has gone on too long. I thought it was time  I spoke out:

"Gotta' say I get a little stressed at Meetups when I hear (too often) a critique saying a writer should look for an easier word than the one used (or a shorter sentence where a longer one is warranted) so that a reader with a less developed vocabulary or level of comprehension  will find the writing more accessible. Aside from the fact that a limited vocab leads to flat and dull writing, it's a bit insulting to assume that readers are of such a low level that they couldn't figure out from the  context  of last night's piece that such terms as "voir dire" have something to do with questioning jurors before they are seated. 

Besides, it's not like we're as erudite as. .. say, John Updike for example.  Neither is it like back in the day when you had to keep three or four paper dictionaries on your desk.  Just spit a word into your cell phone and the definitions pop out a nanosecond later.  The English language is rich in nuance -- it behooves us all to reach for  the heights of it and not to surrender to our inner Neanderthal".    

Could You Please Come to Chicago 1968

Or maybe worse. . .  

Shades of 1968 in 2020?

As I look at the way things are shaping up among the Democrats vying for the party nomination in 2010, I can’t help thinking of the violent and crazy 1968  Democratic National Convention.   The Republican Party  of today might not be having its most illustrious moment, but the environment for Democrat candidates for President is  toxic,and potentially violent.  Democrats are clearly heading for a train wreck.   

While the protesters of the 1968 Democratic Party Convention had concrete political and moral concerns like racism, the Vietnam war, women’s rights, and the unsettling effects of a spate of horrendous assassinations,  Democrats today  are fretting about their fundamental political philosophy.  How far left can we go without re-electing Trump?  How can we  indulge the far-left and yet prevent the crazies from taking over the electoral spotlight as they did in 1968? 

Fact is, they can’t.   Not with far left crazies like  Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib,   and the bartender (no offense, bartenders, it’s a noble profession but just doesn’t automatically qualify you for congress)  Alexandria Ocasio Cortez becoming the new face of the party.  And let’s face it, that’s where the clicks are, and that’s where the media goes when it wants to hear venom pouring upon the Trump administration.

This coven (and their well-heeled sponsors)  is tactical, unafraid to use classic propaganda techniques to gain the spotlight, and  willing to attack anyone, especially fellow Democrats, under the banner of left-wing ideological purity.  The language will be Marxist-Maoist-Alinsky and no Democrats will be immune to shaming.

They’re not too bright and they can’t win but they’re willing to do a lot of damage, especially to members of their own party, to achieve   ideological goals:    isolate Israel, establish socialism,  and redistribute wealth, mainly among themselves, although you can be sure plenty of sops will be thrown to the ‘impoverished” to buy rare items like toilet  paper in  Venezuela.

It would be funny except that I fear violence.  It will be a toxic soup of fresh-faced but bizarre charmers like Beto O’Rourke , avuncular antiques like Joe Biden,  long-time progressive harpies like Elizabeth Pocohontas Warren, and early twentieth centry Wobblies like Bernie Sanders.   All of these will compete against Trump and the Republicans who may be unable to block the crazies in their own bloc.  Expect lots of foul language from Tlaib who called Trump a “mother**cker* and also other crazies  including those on the right who might abide or even vote for a Democrat like Joe Manchin.

But the real problem is that,  because of the identity politics the Democrats have used to steer minority votes in their direction, white men (and perhaps white “original people” women) need not apply.   The numbers held up today would seem to favor Beto-Nut who is reported to have (as a prank?) put his child’s feces into a bowl and told his wife it was an avocado.  Another of his supposed high school peccadilloes was to entertain by writing a story about killing children. 

Don’t believe me b/c I am No One? Here’s an except from Peggy Noonan’s excellent column in the Wall Street Journal today: “Ben Terris of the Washington Post had a striking piece this week in which he reports Mr. O’Rourke ate dirt for its “regenerative powers” after losing to Ted Cruz, has pranked his wife with “Psycho”-style scenes in the shower, and once placed his child’s feces in a bowl and told his wife it was an avocado.”

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan

    Amazon Prime’s   series “Jack Ryan” pilot episode gives you plenty to look at right out of the gate.    The opening scene puts you back in time to when you popped cassettes into your   boom box and danced solo around your bedroom  to the amusement of your little brother.   Except that this is not America and the two boys in the opening sequence are not American kids.  They’re dancing to a “Men Without Hats” tune when a   formation of low flying jets lays a heap of bombs on some  real estate.  This is how kids grow up to be terrorists, according to a popular TV meme. It’s as good a place as any to start  begin an international spy thriller series. 

 From the Middle East to America then where  the studious mildly athletic  preppy boy Jack Ryan is  wearing his  Boston College tee-shirt while rowing his crew boat up a placid river. John Krasinski is an engaging Jack Ryan.    Extreme closeups of his face while rowing   make you like him right away.  He’s the kind of guy mothers want their daughters to marry. He’s the kind of guy the girl’s dad wants to corner into a conversation about the Washington Redskins. Later on when he’s being the virtuous non-polluting CIA analyst riding his bike to work we run into Jack’s boss, James Greer (Wendell Pierce).

    

Pierce was a a laid back street-wise cop in “The Wire” but here he’s been ddemoted to a job behind a desk after screwing up some unknown business in Pakistan.    Greer’s not thrilled with anything about his new post.    He’s accustomed to more action than he expects to get in this new backwater job posting.    He’s an operations guy.  The team he leads at Langley is a heady group of academics and policy wonks.  

 “I heard he went all Colonel Kurtz in the desert. Started making S.A.D dip their bullets in pig’s blood so anyone they killed wouldn’t go to Paradise,” one analyst gossips to Ryan.  So you see right away the creators of this spy thriller are not afraid to call a spade a spade, even if you can’t tell one spade from another until it’s too late.  

Dr. Jack Ryan’s office has this plaque at its entrance:  “CTC Terror Finance and Arms Division.”  He’s no James Bond, in other words.   Jack Ryan’s job is to find patterns of evil in the labyrinth  of financial transactions.  There’s a lot of alphabet soup mentioned, things like SINGINT, fun to look up if you’re so inclined.   I’ll save you the trouble of an online search for SWIFT;  It’s a system set up to track terrorist financing networks around the world. And of course Ryan gets a lead on a high value target who has an unusual pattern of financial transactions in Yemen where the Saudis are battling Houthi rebels not only capsizing Yemen but threatening the Saudi southern border.

The filming is picturesque, the camera roaming over medieval fortificatioins and desert plains to  ( Al Menajeer Syria) the house where the HVT lives with his wife and children.   A convoy of menacing strangers armed to the teeth approaches the compound.  Hanin, the wife of the terrorist mastermind, is tasked to hide away a light complexioned Chechen terrorist and a bunch of other guys.    In Suleiman’s (the HVT)  world, women are expected to ‘know their place.’  

Of course,  Ryan and Greer are hot to find these sweethearts.  Among their more hideous schemes was a plan to infiltrate a joint U.S./Arab military base and free a terrorist held prisoner there.  Clever stuff all the way through makes “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” one of the liveliest action shows on TV.  They way the terrorists gain access to the compound is chilling.  They’ve hidden weapons in the sewn up body cavities of dead fighters who were sent to the compound morgue. A massive gunfight follows and seems never-ending.  

Performances were solid throughout. Great direction of this fast action episode and taut editing made any weak spots fade quickly into memory.  The script writers did a fine job with dialogue, quippy, spare, informed,  not drowning the characters in hollow “Go, go, go!” or “I’ve got this” kind of heroics. 

Virtue doesn’t triumph here. The bad guys get away in the end as they often do in real life.     As far as serial action films go, this first episode of “Tom Clancy”s Jack Ryan” sets a high bar for others including its own future episodes.