Bite Me, Tony

What fresh hell is this?  ( quote attributed to Dorothy Parker*)                                                                                                                       A surprise to no one, yet, nevertheless, a stinging slap in the face to women across the nation, the Supreme Court, on Friday, overturned Roe v. Wade, the longstanding federal legislation allowing women the right to have an abortion. Much reviled by religious and pro-life organizations, Roe v. Wade has had a target on its back since the Supreme Court announced its ruling back in 1973. After assuring Congressional inquisitors during confirmation hearings that they would not reconsider matters that were estab...

Today is Father's Day . It also happens to be Juneteenth . My dad, though no longer with us, would appreciate this. Despite his conservative appearance and, often, dour professional demeanor--he was, after all, a small-town school superintendent (starting out) in 1960's Oklahoma --Dad was actually very progressive and extremely well-educated, quietly championing the plight of the poor and oppressed while working within a biased educational system. In a state (and community) steeped in virulent racism and religious superstition, my dad identified with those on society's margins. One of ten children, he was five years old when his own father died in the mid-1930's. The family found themselves homeless and penniless in the epicenter of the Dust Bowl at the height of the Great Depression . After his father's more fortunate brothers loaded up the family and their few belongings in a truck, they drove them to Boise City, Oklahoma, where the uncles had selected a former c...

What do you even begin to say about Julia Ducournau 's 2021 Palm d'Or winner, Titane ? Wow? Okay, how about: it's not for everybody. In fact, it's probably not for a vast majority of moviegoers, particularly those weaned on soppy romances and superhero "event" movies. Although, to be honest, Titane 's subversive edge does include turning certain elements of Marvel Entertainment and the DC Universe on their heads. And I am really-- REALLY --onboard with that!  Titane is ostensibly a sci-fi/horror hybrid that manages to cross over into significantly deeper territory, transcending its bleak, gory plotline of savagery and transformation, and morphing into a moving meditation on the transformative power of unconditional love. However, getting from Point A to Point B is no walk in the park.  SPOILERS below: Our barely verbal anti-heroine, Alexia, has a titanium plate in her skull, the result of a near-fatal childhood car crash for which she bears much resp...

After a fun-filled, 6-day birthday celebration for Carlos that took us from the oak-filled squares and haunted corners of Old Savannah to the fog-shrouded mountains and artsy byways of amazing Asheville, we got back to Florida and soon encountered a tropical something-or-other. Not a Depression exactly, certainly not a Tropical Storm. But, whatever it was dumped 10 inches of rain on us over a day and a half, and we are just lucky that we don't live in a flood zone. There were people literally kayaking up and down their streets in some areas of the county, while toilets backed up and spilled out into homes (eek!). Local authorities advised us not to go into the flood waters because they didn't know what might be lurking there. And yet people continued plowing their cars directly into these new lochs of the American lowlands, thinking, I guess, that their expensive, new Vettes were waterproof. Yes, we actually did see the driver of a Corvette do exactly this on the Channel 10 Eve...

Between my last blog entry and today, there have been two mass shootings in the USA, leaving a total of 31 people dead--32 if you count Joe Garcia, who died of a broken heart a couple of days after his wife's murder in the Uvalde school slaughter--and 20 others injured. The vast majority of victims in these tragedies were either Mexican-American grade school students or elderly African-American shoppers. As usual, the thoughts-and-prayers crowd, the self-proclaimed pro-lifers, are wringing their hands over the madness but disinclined to entertain any meaningful ideas concerning gun regulation. On my side of the fence, we react with our customary outrage and anger but, for all that, we are fully aware that our words will ultimately fall on deaf ears. Well, really, if the sight of dead children in Newtown, CT, didn't bring the GOP to their knees (and I don't mean in prayer) 10 years ago, why would we think they'd react differently now? A lot has happened since 2012, much ...

Since my last post, somebody, either on the Supreme Court or closely connected to them, leaked a draft of a very important decision that appears to be forthcoming: according to the draft's author, Justice Samuel Alito, Roe v. Wade is going down . Alito specifically cites the writings of 1600's jurist, Sir Matthew Hale, as being influential on his decision (although no mention is made of Hale's enthusiasm for burning suspected witches), and notes the Constitution's failure to include abortion as a protected right. Well, duh . What a maroon! One wonders how we got to the point where a 21st Century Supreme Court Justice channels a 17th Century Witchfinder-General to determine what a woman can and cannot do with her own body.  And yet....here we are.  Thank Donald Trump for Amy Coney-Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, all of whom prevaricated under oath when they were being questioned by Congress during their appointment hearings. In days of yore, Big Daddy Bush was...

With nothing really calling out to us from the local movie houses, C and I found ourselves, once again, glued to the usual media outlets this week. Just like last week and the week before and the week before that. Look, I just can't with the whole damn DC Comics / Marvel Cinematic Universe thing, okay? And while I like some of the current animated stuff more than C (in truth, he hates it), it just feels like the entire cinematic experience has been juvenilized to the point that when a movie made of, by and for adults does come out, it is immediately sent to a streaming service like Netflix or Amazon Prime -- if we're lucky. People love to complain about these services, but if not for them, we'd be stuck with endless variations of The Bachelor , Kardashians and Real Housewives (or more fucking home improvement shows) on TV, or Spiderman 37, Thor Tjueen , and Indiana Jones versus the Shady Pines Raiders at movie theaters. So, all things considered, I'll ...