Cinematic Observations

Greetings, gentle readers.
The past few days (and a free trial subscription to the Hollywood Channel) have afforded me the opportunity to screen a few films of yesteryear and make some ruthlessly cynical observations about them.  Let's revisit some of the films that ran their fingernails across the chalkboard of popular culture all those years ago.

Ladyhawke

This is a film that seems to have improved in people's recollection in proportion with the length of time elapsed since the last viewing.  In short, it looks better in the rear view mirror the smaller it becomes.  Is it as good as we remember it being?  What are the mediocre parts that our subconscious is concealing from us, to spare our childhood innocence?

Cast

Everyone loves Matthew Broderick.  Period.  Not just because of the adolescent ebullience of "Ferris Bueller" or the Civil War anti-slave monument "Glory" or his Broadway work.  He's just been around forever, an unchanging avatar of impish goodwill and positive energy.  If the audience response from the recent film "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" is anything to use as reference, Rutger Hauer is still a folk hero.  As any hardcore gangsta-rap aficionado will tell you, Michelle Pfeiffer still has enough street cred to stop a drive-by shooting with a single arched eyebrow.  Even John Wood is recalled by many, although only as Professor Falken from the equally-revered 80s cult classic "Wargames."  It's possible that some may recall his excellent and tear-jerking performance in "Shadowlands" as Christopher Riley, but that demographic is ridiculously small.  In fact, beyond myself and a fellow named Colin Mitzel, very few people recognize the devastating emotional power of that film.
Finally, fans of the original TV series "The Prisoner" will fondly remember Leo McKern as the most enigmatic of the actors to portray Number Two.
In short, Ladyhawke has no shortage of acting talent or pedigree. Why on Earth was this film not given a triumphal procession at the Academy Awards en route to some sort of AFI recognition as a masterpiece of modern cinema?

Plot and Other Stuff

The epic, legendary, faerie-tale scope of this film place it firmly in the genre encompassing other fondly esteemed films as "Willow", "The Hobbit"', and "Labyrinth."  Like those other classics, picking out logical inconsistencies or other narrative flaws is futile.  Suspension of disbelief trumps everything, and the power of character in the spotlight of myth is the dynamo that drives the story.  Bizarre developments like summer crashing into the depths of winter within 48 hours, or the mechanics of crossbow construction and ballistics can be gleefully dismissed because of the intensity of the clashes between good and evil, right and wrong, and love against the forces of avarice and malice.

So What's Wrong?

Why is "Ladyhawke" not rated as a classic, or even a great film?  Everyone is welcome to their own speculations and calculations, but I reckon that there are two things that torpedo the production: editing and music.
The cinematography itself is not totally garbage.  As I mentioned, there are some great shots of scenery and sets, mountains and cathedrals, and some great pageantry using costumes and uniforms.  That being said, the post production staff must have been a troop of foeces-flinging spider monkeys.  Shots are cut and spliced helter-skelter, with very little attention to continuity or even linear narrative exposition.  Several scenes are dropped (or flung) at the feet of the audience without any establishing shots, dialogue, or segues. Several sequences of cross-cuts are supposed to increase tension through simultaneous and time-dependent actions, but are so sloppily dredged into one another as to provide all of the dramatic impact of a runny bowel movement.  The beautiful Italian landscape and mediaeval sets make for some wonderful mise-en-scéne shot constructions, but some of the shots are haphazardly stapled together to produce jarring disturbances in the storytelling process.
Finally, there is the music.  There are two flavours on offer throughout the film - a sombre and dramatic orchestral score underpinned with Gregorian chants and pentatonal progressions, and a pop-rock electro-synth bastard byproduct of rejected Alan Parsons Project riffs.  The latter has not aged well.  Unless you are abnormally nostalgic for side-ponytail haircuts, legwarmers, and extended montage sequences of learning to gleam the cube, the music is absolutely repellent and thoroughly incompatible with the film.
In conclusion, a solid post-production team should be able to overhaul this film and create a new special edition from the existing component pieces and some appropriate musical passages.  In fact, this should be such an elementary exercise that I am surprised that there hasn't been a "Blu-Ray Platinum Collector's Edition" released yet.  It should only require a 12 year-old with Adobe Premiere Pro, a 16-track sound mixing board, and a 1981 Bontempi organ.  Film executives, take note - you don't need another sequel, reboot, or comic-book adaptation to fill your production and release schedules - just fix "Ladyhawke" and collect the spoils.

The Inglorious Bastards

Quentin Tarantino's remake of the 1978 original had a number of very subversive elements in it.  People who have been brainwashed into thinking that Tarantino is some sort of gore shock-filmmaker because of ignorant reviews of "Reservoir Dogs" and disturbingly sycophantic reviews of "The Hateful Eight" will happily buy into the idea that his "Inglourious Basterds" is a gleeful shoot-em-up of Nazis, who are cinematic shorthand when it comes to cheap villains. 
It's very simple.  Nazis are evil.  Those who do something to oppose them must therefore be good.  No further character development, script, or exposition of any kind required.  If the morality of a grave-looting defiler of antiquities is in doubt, just remember that he's against the Nazis, and that will tell you that he is a good guy.
"The Dirty Dozen" is a typical redemption story of ne'er-do-wells turning from criminals to charming rogues by dint of slaughtering a few hundred on-screen people in SS uniforms.  It's a tempting template: good guys shoot loads of Germans, no moral questions involved, the world is saved, and everyone can congratulate themselves about the appropriate and justified use of lethal force in a good, proper, and ethical war.  Pass the ammunition and expand the Defence Budget again.  Producers get funding and insurance without a problem, the project is greenlighted by the studio, and the film makes it's prerequisite 250% return on investment.
The thing to notice here is that both the 1978 original "Inglorious Bastards" and the 2009 "Inglourious Basterds" are deeply subversive.  What do I mean by this?  The filmmakers play an elaborate joke on the audience and their expectations.
The first film sets up the usual conventions - Americans represent decency, democracy, freedom, etc. while the Germans are brutal non-humans that act as living target practice, forming an agency for Americans to prove their innate goodness through murder.  But somewhere along the lines, the Italian filmmakers got a little cheeky.  Serious cracks appear in the depiction of the American troops, first through a scene showing American officers gunning down their own deserting forces, and then later through an extended dialogue between two Americans featuring some race and gender baiting that would send entire college campus populations fleeing to their safe spaces.
By the end of the film, after the vast majority of charming rogues have bravely sacrificed their own lives to defeat the godless Huns, it turns out that the one notable survivor of the original gang is the most racist, rapiest scumbag of the lot.  So racist that he calls Fred Williamson a nigger to his face.  The film concludes with the predator walking off with an innocent French nurse whom he intends to rape, murder, and dump.  Unflattering portrait of Americans in Europe?  Probably.  An unsettling conclusion to an otherwise stock B-movie plot?  Definitely.
Tarantino ups the ante in his seemingly generic WWII shoot-em-up of a similar name.  In this film, we see a complete inversion of tropes.  The SS baddies are slick, cultured, educated, erudite, and impeccably well-mannered civilized sorts, while the American revenge-fantasy liberation heroes are knuckle-dragging, slobbering barbarians who delight in gratuitous gore and monosyllabic threats.  To top it off, the revenge fantasy here is JEWISH.
Let's recall that the United States refused to allow refugee ships of Jews leaving Europe to dock, like the SS St. Louis in 1939.  Later, after the United States had declared war on Germany, they actually persecuted Jewish refugees as German spies, and sought the death penalty.
Quick aside - the current presidential administration's predilection for a "Muslim Travel Ban" or for denying entrance to Syrian refugees sound an awful lot like this statement by William Bullitt, the American Ambassador to France:

"More than one-half the spies captured doing actual military spy work against the French Army were refugees from Germany.  Do you believe there are no Nazi and Communist agents of this sort in America?”

How about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

“Not all of them are voluntary spies.  It is rather a horrible story, but in some of the other countries that refugees out of Germany have gone to, especially Jewish refugees, they found a number of definitely proven spies.”

And as The Smithsonian reports:

"Until the very end of 1944—by which time photographs and newspaper reports had demonstrated that the Nazis were carrying out mass murder—Attorney General Francis Biddle warned Roosevelt not to grant immigrant status to refugees."

Remember the poisoned Skittles tweet by Donald J. Trump, Jr.? 

“If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful?”

History let the American government watch innocents perish before.  It seems to have given the current administration a similar pass.
So here's the fantasy - the American government was not complicit in the holocaust because of its xenophobia, and Jews are magically given some sort of agency to "strike back" in revenge for the holocaust... during the holocaust.
Laughable, given the historical circumstance.
And so we find Brad Pitt leading a group of murderously thuggish "Jews" to run about in Europe, killing as many Germans as possible in retribution for a then-ongoing genocide.  One wonders how an elderly rabbi would view the depiction of urbane, polite, cultured, and literate German officers being beaten to death and torn to bloody ribbons by slavering, grinning troglodytes with Stars of David around their necks.  Or even how these bloodthirsty brutes emerged from their yeshivot, their minds twinkling with talmudic meditation, before deciding that they would much prefer bludgeoning skulls to bloody pulp instead of reading the Torah.
In short, Tarantino pulls audiences in with the expectation that they will be gratified by seeing justice done in a hideously entertaining way against villains who thoroughly deserve it, and thus rectify all of the horrid, atrocious things that really happened in history.  He then confuses them by making the baddies educated and civilized, while the good guys are grunting neanderthals.  The introduction of the "Bear Jew" character actually depicts him emerging from a cave with a baseball bat.
Finally, the viewer is left with one of two options - a distasteful and repellent victory for the forces of "Good", or a sad and tragic defeat for the forces of "Bad."  In the final analysis, it is a challenge to audiences to determine if they can make their own moral evaluations, or whether they just accept conventions blindly and identify with whomever wears the proverbial white hat.  Douglas Sirk would be proud.

The Comedians

Given a scriptwriter of Graham Greene's calibre, and a cast that includes Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, James Earl Jones, Peter Ustinov, and Sir Alec Guinness, one might think that this film would be requisite viewing for film aficionados.  Strangely enough, very few people have even heard of the production.  I think that it's worth watching for several reasons. 
First off, the script is tight, economical, and neat.  Very few words or scenes are wasted, making the entire production tense and gripping.  Guinness has a smaller role, but commands attention during every appearance.  Taylor and Burton exude a confused and conflicted obsession for one another — a parallel between their real selves and their characters in the film that draws the eye in an almost hypnotic spiral of emotional turmoil. 
Second, the film deals with an emergent post-colonial dictatorship in the third world.  The film treats this sort of potentially explosive setting with respect, and allows the audience to experience the situation dramatically, rather than editorially describe the conditions.  For example, "Star Wars Episode IV:  A New Hope" begins with an introductory narrative crawl that declares that Rebel forces have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.  No subtlety here.  In contrast, "The Comedians" presents characters and events dispassionately and lets the viewer decide where good and evil, or right and wrong reside.
Finally, this film has some fantastic roles for minority actors.  Not just for 1967, and not just for a film set in Haiti, but in general.  James Earl Jones, Georg Stanford Brown, and Cicely Tyson turn in magnificently nuanced performances.  To the best of my recollection, this is the earliest film roles I can recall for Zakes Mokae ("Cry Freedom") and Roscoe Lee Browne (TV cameo artist extraordinaire), making this a film where super-mega-millionaire-stars Taylor and Burton are almost upstaged off the star billing.
More films to come when I build up some more stamina to document my responses to them.  "Battle of the Sexes" is likely to come under scrutiny soon, as my mother and I recently watched the Emma Stone/Steve Carell vehicle in Calgary.

Shower Songs

And finally, here is the playlist that accompanied one of my showers in Calgary, during the time I spent over the holidays in my mother's house.

• Devil Went Down to Georgia, by The Charlie Daniels Band
• Roxanne, by The Police
• All Your Base are Belong to Us, by Zerowing
• One of those Rivers, by Dodgy
• He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother, by The Hollies
• Lord of the Dance, performed by Captain Tractor
• Magneto and Titanium Man, by Paul McCartney
• Catholic Girls, by Frank Zappa

And until next time, good night England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

The Giving Season

Greetings, gentle readers.
Allow me to sketch a quick tableau of a family Christmas gathering.  The hearth fire is puttering away radiantly, the tree is adorned with all manner of shiny and pretty baubles, the gifts and snacks are heaped high in their own realms, and everyone present is smiling contently with stomachs full of a hearty meal.
But this is Christmas, after all, and Christmas means acquisition.  Gather ye consumer goods while ye may.  It is not long before the carefully wrapped boxes of things are being distributed to the awaiting crowd.  Let's fast forward an hour's time.
There are heaps of presents stacked in corners of the room, organized and readied for transportation, and a couple of toys are making obnoxious noises and worrying the puppy.  One teenage girl surveys her loot - a box.  The other kids got presents.  She got the empty container that might have held a present, but didn't.  Don't get me wrong.  A cardboard box can be thrilling, particularly to a kitten.  However,it looks a bit lacklustre in comparison to the turbo drone aircraft in front of the teenage boy in the centre of the room, or the 3-D virtual reality goggle set his father wields.  The girl smiles bravely.
The girl's father sits across the room.  He has already refused several invitations to sit closer to middle of the congregation.  Whatever reasons he had seem justified as round after round and circuit after circuit of gift recipients are named, and his name is notably absent from the rolls.  Finally, a present is passed over to his corner.  It's a frying pan that is divided into several sections, allowing a person to cook an egg, two rashers, and some hashbrowns simultaneously.  It's a wonderful present for a person who lives alone and has to prepare breakfast for one every morning.  It's a great way to let a person's food feel close to other foods, and not alone and abandoned on the stovetop or in the kitchen.  It's not a good present for a single father.  The subtext reads:  you will never have custody or share your life with another, so get used to feeding yourself.  This is an efficient way to do so.
Before long, the gifts are distributed, the stump of the tree is visible beneath the boughs, and the father quietly excuses himself, takes his bachelor's frying pan, and leaves without much ado.  His daughter heads upstairs to the guest room to play with her empty box.  The other parents play card games over coffee while their children try on their clothing, read their books, and take pictures of their toys with their smartphones.
So, in conclusion, if going to attend a festive gift-giving celebration where there are likely to be second-class citizens, bring a few extra presents that can be quickly addressed on the spot.  It's a small sacrifice to make.  It doesn't upset the more fortunate, and brings a disproportionate amount of joy to the overlooked and ignored.
I never thought that a specific occasion was required to mandate that one person give a gift to another.  If you care for someone, give that person a gift, where it be a peck on the cheek, a line of poetry, an afternoon's worth of housework, or whatever.  It is really disappointing when you realize that you only get gifts from people who feel obligated to go online sometime in November and order something that ticks all of the boxes for an appropriate present, before perfunctorily handing it to you and washing their hands of another odious responsibility.
So after another heartwarming holiday season, it's farewell from me and may authenticity pursue you doggedly for the rest of your days.
Goodnight England and the Colonies,
—mARKUS

Decency prevails. Barely.

Greetings, gentle readers.
Judge Roy Moore, fondler of teens and bizarrely adherent fan of the ten commandments, was defeated in the Alabama special Senatorial race last Tuesday.  This is a tremendous victory for people with some sort of sense of dignity and honour, particularly the 93% of African-American voters who helped elect democrat Doug Jones, whose record as a public prosecutor includes convicting Ku Klux Klan members for the murder of four little girls.
But as for the mouth-breathing, pig-ignorant, swayback rednecks that are still dragging their knuckles around the state, there is still some sort of hope that their narrow, discriminatory, and bigoted agenda will be represented in Congress, as Doug Jones recently admitted that he will be inclined to vote in line with certain Republican values.
It's yet another way that a slight updraught in fortune can carry a whiff of sulphur with it.

Reality Revelry

The latest reality "So You Want To Be A Celebrity" television show is just launching in Canada.  Fine.  Mediocrities around the country can queue up around soundstages and demean themselves for the amusement of the average populace.  I noticed with disinterest that "Fergie" from the Black Gin Doo-Doo Crowes is one of the coaches for the wannabe candidates.  Fine.  Another chance for women to claim some airtime and stake a place in an admittedly squalid, but apparently real piece of celebrity real estate.  Then I heard the kicker.  The judge, who will award a record contract, merchandising campaign, and grandiose concert tour is none other than... some fat, sweaty A&R guy.  Yup.  Post-Weinstein, and with all of the knowledge and progress we've made, the position of gatekeeper is still held by a seedy-looking guy behind a desk who is "famous" because he "made Taylor Swift," if I recall the advertisement verbatim.
Women are going to throw themselves into another one of these crucibles, reminiscent of the part of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" where the song "Young Lust" accompanies a groupie as she makes her way backstage by performing a series of sexual activities on male gatekeepers.  I've mentioned before that the proverbial "casting couch" is not proverbial at all.  People of all persuasions, not just women, are drawn like moths to the flame of fame and celebrity, and will sacrifice anything to get there.  The Law of Supply and Demand automatically directs poovy power-seekers towards those gatekeeper positions, and people like Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd end up being the victims of those gatekeepers capriciously flexing their muscles.
How do we fix the problem?  Well, really, the answer is art.
Once upon a time, artists had to labour at their craft to produce something that would be weighed by the marketplace of consumers, and the value of that artistic expression to society could be measured by things like sales and performance attendances.
In that atmosphere, musicians wanted to play and compose music.  Writers wanted to wrestle words, sculptors wanted to shape the human experience into the tactically perceptible, actors wanted to make experiences and insights accessible to others, and so on.  If artists worked hard enough, they became good at their chosen field.  Fame and money then followed as a logical development of skill and craftsmanship.
That was then.  Now, albums/films/books do not need to be recorded, pressed, marketed, distributed, etc.  Any old chump with a smartphone can record some audio or video clip (or text) that can spray around the cybersphere in seconds and gain instant public acknowledgement.  There is no incentive to get better or to improve if the objective is fame.  One can get it and keep it with a minimal amount of effort, as many talentless and inauthentic humanoids have capably demonstrated.
One might suggest that this dilution of artistic vision in all manner of production should reduce the role of the gatekeeper and therefore direct the industries involved away from manipulative and sexual abuses of power.  Not so.  Big corporations have already shown that when a newfound "celebrity" is not profitable to their branding, they can very easily turn off the tap.  I won't even mention the names of the talentless asshats that constitute examples.  And the fact that "The Launch" is an actual television program (I admit, I had to look up the name of the thing) indicates that big corporations are still capable of dangling carrots in front of avaricious and simple-minded individuals so as to profit from the schadenfreude and entertainment value of people embarrassing themselves in front of large audiences.
As an authentic individual in this society, one suspects that avoiding the tendency towards instant gratification and high-volume consumables should be self-evident.  It's also extremely difficult.  Perhaps we'll have to wait until the revolution comes before we can really start appreciating the aesthetic as a necessary aide toward emotional and spiritual maturity, rather than a diversion that reduces our anxiety about our dire socioeconomic predicament and diminishing possibilities of a better life.

Shower Songlist

• Pretty Fly for a Rabbi, by Weird Al Yankovic
• Eileen, by Keith Richards
• War is Over, by John Lennon
• The Lion Sleeps Tonight, performed by Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger
• Video Killed the Radio Star, by The Buggles
• The Pirate Song, by George Harrison and Eric Idle
• Hurricane, by Bob Dylan

Well, there are certainly some songs there that would assist people in appreciating the obsolescence of the "i before e" rule of English spelling.  There also seems to be a downward trend in terms of emotional appeal.
And that's things as I see them.  Until next time, goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Late Night Roundup

Greetings, gentle readers.
It will come as no surprise to many of you that I derive much of my current events knowledge from late night chat shows on telly.  With the exception of dedicated news providers like the CBC News Channel, there are very few places to find information on world events.  It may also come as no surprise that late night chat shows can be extraordinarily superficial and annoyingly fluffy industry-schmoozing and giggling.
I PVR these programs not because their broadcasting hours are past my bedtime, but because the advertising is monumentally dominant in terms of airtime.  I skip something like 30% of the time by blowing through the commercials.  The shows that I have currently scheduled to PVR reveal something of my preferences and choices.
I stopped recording Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show primarily because his cringeworthy toadying and obsequious celebrity worship was starting to nauseate me.  Another factor is one that Fallon shares with Stephen Colbert - his consistent tendency to act as a huckster for his own book.  Both of them use airtime ostensibly intended for entertainment and information as a platform for shameless self-advertising.
The straw that broke the camel's back was the death of Fats Domino.  Fallon spent a goodly portion of his monologue rhapsodizing about the musical legend, reminding people of the legacy that the big man bequeathed to us all.  Throughout the monologue, and into a large portion of his time spent behind the show's desk, Fallon kept on lyrically leading into Domino's big hits, launching into a capella versions of "Ain't That a Shame", "Blueberry Hill", and "I'm Walking."  on each occasion, his oft-lauded and praised house band "The Roots" stared silently at him, mouths agape.  Drummer Questlove occasionally tapped his hi-hat out of rhythm.  By the third or fourth a capella attempts, I realized that Fallon was inviting the band to join him, but they didn't know how.  One of the greatest musical legends of stride rock 'n' roll and R&B piano went unrecognized and unacknowledged by a band of professional musicians.  That's when I wrote that show off.
As I previously mentioned, Stephen Colbert irks me when he promotes his own material, but there is also something lurking in the production of the whole show that I am only just beginning to recognize as inherently mediocre and inauthentic.  A couple of weeks ago, one of Colbert's guests was author and biographer Walter Isaacson.  He was on the show to promote his new biography of Leonardo da Vinci.  His previous biographies of Einstein and Steve Jobs are both New York Times bestsellers, and there was every expectation that this book would perform similarly.
Colbert's Late Show afforded Isaacson a tiny sliver of time, likely because they thought that the man and the material were not peppy enough to titillate the younger demographic that their advertisers are chasing.  They were dead wrong.
Colbert used all of the buzz words in the opening exchanges of the interview.  Steve Jobs?  Check.  Kids have heard of him.  Genius?  Yep.  Draw a similarity between the author's subjects.  As Colbert's ideas sputtered out, Isaacson volunteered the real reasons that his work is relevant and immediate.
Leonardo da Vinci already has an "official" biography, written almost contemporaneously by Giorgio Vasari.  Isaccson's biography uses events in Renaissance Italy five hundred years ago to draw social parallels with our present day civilization.
Here's where Colbert missteps.  The interview could have pivoted around the fact that da Vinci's life and works not only revolutionized art, medicine, literature, engineering, architecture, and industry, but the man as an individual gives us a glimpse of what it takes to change the world.  Elon Musk is trying now.  Will he succeed? 
The answer is found in the book.  15th century Florence was a hotbed of contrasting opinions and ideologies.  The Catholic Church was just about to run into the Reformation, the New World was just being opened up to Europe, trade with the Orient was blossoming into a true exchange of ideas as well as commercial goods.  The Crusades and the  Black Death were over, but population migration had scattered cultures and languages across any sort of national boundaries.
Into this comes Leonardo.  Left-handed, homosexual, flamboyant, iconoclastic, and more than a little heretical, it is possible that he only succeeded because he managed to offend everyone equally while simultaneously charming them over by dint of personality and wit.
Consider today's climate, where political tensions over national identities, immigration, environmental science, religious dogma, and a confused moral compass are tearing apart families, cities, and political parties.  In all of this drama and chaos, there is a fertile bed of energy yearning for a creative individual to channel it.  Perhaps this book should be titled "Looking for Leonardo."
Considering that the Spanish Inquisition started torturing and burning people for precisely the "perversions" and "heresies" that Leonardo flaunted, and that they were doing it during his lifetime, his triumphs and achievements must be seen as humanity's transcendence surpassing some of its greatest depredations.
The innocent refugees fleeing the ghastly charnel house of Syria and the post Arab-spring Middle East are mimicking the movement of humanity in the wake of the Crusades.  The debates over homosexuality and abortion are just alive now as they were then.  Climate change?  Medical ethics?  The clash of ideas is still vigorous.  Whether it be the partial sinking of the Tower of Pisa or a starving polar bear; foetal stem cell experiments or the use of cadavers for anatomical research; the grounds of conflict remain the same.  The wars have not been won in five hundred years of argument and debate.
In short, Isaacson could have dissected the current American political climate from the point of view of a historical figure who navigated those same waters to create some of humanity's greatest triumphs and sparked centuries of creative insight into the human condition.  Instead, he was boiled down to quick factoids and meaningless pop culture references in the space of a few hundred seconds.
That is why Colbert is just about to be kicked off my viewing list.  He only remains because he still manages to draw interesting guests who occasionally provide a useful or meaningful datum.

Musical Interlude

• When We Was Fab, by George Harrison
• Roxanne, by the Police
• Stuck in the Middle With You, performed by the Frantic Flintstones
• Have Love, Will Travel, performed by Crazyhead
• Make You Mad, by Odds
• Outside of This, by Jon and Vangelis
• Alison, by Elvis Costello
• Southbound Again, by Dire Straits

And here is where I must leave you once again, dear reader.  Until next time, it's goodnight England and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

John Lennon Memorial Day '17

Greetings, gentle readers.
After some intense feuding with some sort of diabolical stomach flu for the past week or so, I've finally brought myself to set a few more jagged thoughts to publish.  It does seem a bit like whistling whilst western civilization immolates itself in a funeral pyre of fear and ignorance, but Samuel Pepys scribbled notes as the 17th century sputtered and bumbled about, and we are all the inheritors of his commentary. 

Political Musings

Having just picked up another copy of Niccolo Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, I was forced to ask myself once again to consider the ongoing struggle between appearance and reality.  Just as a person can't mention Thomas Hobbes without being beaten over the head with the line "nasty, brutish and short" to describe human life in the state of nature, so too is Machiavelli eternally tarred with the "it is better to be feared than loved" bollocks from The Prince.  Both political philosophers are associated with the catchiest and most popular phrase in their respective bodies of work, rather than their most insightful or even their most representative thoughts.  History thus thinks that both men endorse some sort of tyrannical, repressive regime, presided over by a "Prince" with the authority derived from the force of a "Leviathan."
To make long stories short, both men were writing for a particular audience, and telling them what they wanted to hear.  Hobbes wanted to return to England after the Parliamentary Rebellion, and so had to suck up to Oliver Cromwell, and thus said that the right to rule was not a Divine Right of Kings, but one derived from the barrel of a gun (point of a sword, heavy bit of a club, etc.).  Machiavelli had to tell the Medici family that he wasn't going to stir up any trouble against them so that they wouldn't see him as an obstacle and have him revoked.  K-I-L-L-E-D... revoked.
Political scientists who argue that force and coercion are the keystones of social contracts ought to use these sources to support their arguments very carefully, lest those same sources contradict them.
But as one astute wag remarked, political science is just history for people who are unable to draw their own conclusions.

What Has Trump Done Now?

American politics is such a trash heap of idiocy and incoherent myopic onanism that it defies anything resembling a simple or clear delineation.  Every poll and survey conducted in the past ten years indicates that the two-party system of Democrats and Republicans is seen as corrupt, ineffective, misrepresentative, and broken.  The American public overwhelmingly despise their current system of governance.  Period. 
And then we hit a touchstone issue, and we can see how the American public are again herded into their pens and forced back into the same polarizing paradigm that quietly becomes synonymous with the old two-party system. 

• Abortion.  Democrats are obviously all godless babykillers.  All marginally literate evangelicals therefore must vote for the Republican party at all costs.  There's one demographic sorted.  People who can barely read use ancient scribblings of those who could barely write to justify voting for dirty old pooves.
• Sexual Harassment.  Democratic members of Congress must be horsewhipped within an inch of their lives and ridden out of DC on a rail.  Republican members of Congress are given a badge and several fund-raising events where they can double down and insist that the Bible has set a precedent for acceptable misogyny and paedophilia. (paedos love Exodus 19:31-35)
• Immigration.  Anyone that does not endorse hermetically sealing all of the borders of the United States indefinitely is some kind of bleeding-heart liberal who no doubt masturbates to a bust of V. I. Lenin shrouded in a hammer-and-sickle flag.  Eating popcorn while watching Syrian refugees drown, starve, burn, and bleed to death is solid patriotism.
• Taking a knee.  Military veterans who take a knee out of respect for fallen comrades during a funeral procession is fine.  Athletes taking a knee to protest over-militarized and racially discriminatory police forces is un-American.  Another example of offense being taken where none was being given.
• Gun Control.  Mass shootings are always declared some kind of mental health problem.  Why then is there no impetus to increase funding or resources for mental health either in the armed forces, or in the national health services?  Postulate:  
• all mass shootings are as a result of mental health issues
• women and men are equally susceptible to mental health issues
• over 98% of mass shootings are perpetrated by males
• An easier conclusion to reach prior to speed-dialing the psychiatric association hotline would be to look at the issue from a gender perspective, rather than a wellness one.
• Health Care.  Everyone knows that the best thing for the American population is a single-payer health care system.  By "best," I mean keeping the most people healthy at the lowest overall cost.  The problem with single-payer is that it doesn't make corporate CEOs filthy rich.  Pharmaceutical and medical tech companies make billions every year at one end, and medical insurance companies make a fortune at the other.  Some 50% of American taxpayers are one leukaemia diagnosis away from bankruptcy, but the majority deny the possibility, saying that Medicare, Medicaid, and other social health programs are just part of the slippery slope toward godless communism.  See Abortion.

In short, the deadlock of the American public over these basic issues is actually reflected in Senate and the House of Representatives.  A greater person would be like Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith - someone who believes the absurd not only because of a wellspring of positivity, but possibly because it is inherently absurd.  A true Knight of Faith believes that somewhere over the rainbow, some magical Hegelian synthesis between these diametrically opposed viewpoints will lead to a true enlightenment of all the parties.  Mutual appreciation and compromise all around.
Unfortunately, I fall a little short of that lofty spiritual perch.  I'm more of a Knight of Infinite Resignation.  Like two falcons locked in a death spiral, pirouetting toward the stony earth, I see only annihilation.  Rigidity, intractability, and inflexibility have condemned American society to death. 
I have hope that once the cycle of verwirrung has run its course, common sense will allow a rebirth that incorporates the secular humanist democratic thoughts of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, et al. with the rational post-industrial economic understandings of the 21st century.  Until then, citizens of the world just have to hold their noses and keep their head down while ignorance and fear run rampant.

Washtime Warblings

• The Motorcycle Song, by Arlo Guthrie
• Why, by Melanie Chisholm
• Escape, by Journey
• Wrote for Luck, performed by Manic Street Preachers
• African Sky Blue, by Juluka
• Let it Ride, performed by Big Sugar
• Furious Rose, by Lisa Loeb
• My Favourite Game, by The Cardigans
• Turn On Your Lovelight, performed by Them, featuring Van Morrison

Just a few quick observations:

• Returning to the iPod hours later and letting the random playlist continue, the next track to play was "Shine a Little Love" by the Electric Light Orchestra, which is a very eerie track to follow "Turn On Your Lovelight."
• Almost fifty percent of the tracks feature female lead vocalists, something egalitarian to note considering that I have never made a conscious effort to specifically populate my music collection with any sort of quota.
• In a playlist almost bereft of any sort of drug or substance references, Lisa Loeb's song sticks out by mentioning "your opiate eyes." Depending on how physiotherapy goes, I may be looking at breaking my own opioid habit in the next few months.

In Memoriam

Today marks the 37th anniversary of John Lennon's death.  The occasion saddens me immensely, and has done every year.  Just wondering what the world would be like with his acerbic wit to deflate some of today's self-indulgent pretensions is an intellectual exercise as depressing as it is futile.  I miss the guy, warts and all.  I've been moping for decades, and the list of wonderful contributors to the soul of humanity and illuminators of the human condition who have passed away lengthens each year.  Tom Petty was the most recent knife-twist to the figurative cultural gut, and I'm tired of exposing my emotions on social media.  So cheers John.  I'll have a brandy alexander and think about you.

And that's it from me, other than to say that Liverpool FC have been struggling to deal with some severely woeful defensive issues, and have decided over the past month that the answer to defensive frailty is complete offensive overload.  Smashing seven goals against Spartak Moskva this past Wednesday was just a further honing of the knife's edge as every minor misstep by the Russian squad was ruthlessly and relentlessly punished by swift execution.  Surely Everton FC are quaking in their proverbial mukluks ahead of this weekend's cross-town derby.  That sort of fear is the progenitor of the same minor missteps I mentioned earlier.
Goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS