Abstract Invention

The Concept of Noise

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 02:26:00 +0000

I am, and have always been, a seeker of solitude. It is a contradiction to nature itself, since the human ear is endlessly bombarded by sounds within its frequency range, to say nothing of the memory of past sounds rebounding inside our skulls. To provide more confusion to this premise, I love loud movies, the boisterous fervor of sporting events and music of all kinds. As I write, Glenn Gould is playing (and humming along to) the Goldberg Variations. It is not a simple thing to feel completely alone on this planet.

The concept of noise tracks me as I pursue some untraceable instant when sound simply disappears from existence. It envelops me like a persistent fog that started at the moment of creation, whether that be from the vibrating dust of the Big Bang or my mother’s screams upon my initial entry into the world. Either way, my ears have not rested for a moment, feeding my brain information that must be deciphered and interpreted, cataloged and indexed, forgotten and remembered. With each bit of aural data comes attached another element, a slight hissing of always there disturbance, a distorted echo of the constant madness inherent in sound. It is present in every screeching tire, trilling note and breaking glass, a restless unrest coursing to an interminable terminus. There is no escape, for it or us.

Even a silent pursuit such as reading yields a byproduct of noise. It is not written into the paragraph, or between its lines, but the impression of near-nothingness arrives with each word as if radiating from the white edges of the page. When we convert what we read into thoughts and ideas, the weight of its accompanying sound adds an unseen burden that we fail to properly account for in the process. It is difficult enough to plow through something such as this to then contend with rocks hidden beneath the row. We find ourselves stopping in the middle of a sentence, but why? The answer is that, no matter how peaceful the setting, we are distracted by the noise.

If I must live amidst the cacophony, perhaps it would be wise to attempt to unmask its source. A simple conversation across a table is filled with the extraneous – while the person speaks, our minds unlock from the stream of words and ponder about and beyond. He uses his hands a lot when he speaks …. Does he think I’m stupid …? I think I’ll have pasta for dinner. This is all so common and so distorting to the intended meaning that the message is often misallocated as useless information. The root cause is noise; noise in the setting, noise added during delivery (the hands, the perceived attitude) or after receipt (Yeah, pasta sounds good). Words are often merely adequate at describing our thoughts and feelings, but for most of us, it is all we have to work with. When the merely adequate is sabotaged by our inability to focus properly, then the intended idea becomes a misrepresented tangle.

It is said that no communication medium is as pure as radio. Unlike reading written works, we are relieved of the necessity to imagine tone or pace – the word is delivered in a complete, enunciated form. We get that with television and movies as well, along with the added burden of facial expression and body posture that demands further decoding. Radio is far from noiseless, but its noise is within a discernable range and of an obvious shape. We can account, and allow, for such distortion. Consider the impact of the War of the Worlds broadcast … compare Edward R. Murrow, our man in London, with Edward R. Murrow hosting Person-to-Person. Watch any of the current simulcast political pundits, and then simply listen. You will understand the difference when the added noise of the visual is removed.

The telephone is a radio, a form of communication that most closely approximates intimacy from a distance. The words travel directly into the holes in our heads, as if whispered in the dark from across a shared pillow. The truths are damning and the lies are sweet. There is no sentiment as unalterable and completely construed as that contained in a person’s voice. It is of a construction formed out of the air and shaped from within, benefitting from the lack of any visual cues. Like radio, the telephone’s noise is apparent and excusable. Like radio, its message is clear and unavoidable. Like radio, its expressions of love and hate are unremittingly stark. We are helplessly drawn to the sound and held captive by it.

As Glenn Gould continues to play and hum, the concept of the noise of existence plagues the baroque piano discourse, sticking to it in a layer of sonic film. The man is trying to speak to me through his fingers, using keyboard, hammer and strings. I’m not quite sure that what I am hearing is him or me … or everything else. In seeking some sense of quiet, should I shout out for silence and add my voice to the din? Or should I just sit here, put out the light and turn my ears inward?

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

How to Live Without Health Insurance

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0000

When initially added to the rolls of the unemployed, I picked up the COBRA coverage from my former employer. It wasn’t a great plan, but with the federal subsidy, it cost less that $150.00 a month. I had to drop it recently, after the whole unemployment benefits issue became a political football and the subsidy expired. So, now I’m without any coverage, joining a host of others in a predicament similar to mine. We need to be careful, folks. Being destitute is one thing. Being destitute and at the mercy of the medical profession is another entirely.

Here are a few tips for keeping what little wealth you have left from the clutches of the healthcare money vacuum:

Don’t eat food– It’s a well-known fact that most gastrointestinal problems result from eating something. The only way to avoid stomach distress is to eliminate all solids from your diet. You can’t afford to eat out anymore, which is just as well when one considers that the people preparing and handling food in restaurants require reminding to wash their hands before leaving the bathroom. They need signs, for crying out loud, while half of them can’t even read English. Supermarket fare isn’t much safer. Forget chicken, pork and beef unless you’re suicidal. Even fresh fruit and vegetables pose a threat from pesticides and unsanitary handling and storage. Canned goods are also a bad idea, owing to the possibility of botulism. Stick to bullion and boiled water, with a lemon or lime on the side. Don’t worry; you have enough stored fat to keep things running until Obamacare kicks in. And remember to wash those hands!

Stay off the streets and sidewalks – You’re probably driving less now that you’re on the dole. Gas costs money, as does the normal wear and tear associated with pulling your car out of the driveway. God forbid you breakdown on the road; even a tire blowout presents a risk of injury, besides the added expense of repair. You’re better off walking, right? Wrong. Those people driving past you, distracted by cell phones and Blackberries, or with worry over possibly losing their jobs, constitute a major threat to your health. They’re not paying attention to the road that you’re walking along or across and nothing puts a body in traction quicker than an encounter with a wayward automobile. Sure, the movies frequently show guys walking away unscathed after getting rolled up a car roof, but that’s from the Wyle E. Coyote school of film. It doesn’t matter how carefully you proceed. If you’re not the Roadrunner, you’re potential road-kill. Stay in your house. If you must go out for supplies, take a route that minimizes your street presence. Make friends with a Native American and ask him to show you the sacred trails to the Seven-Eleven.

Don’t go to the bathroom – Most accidents occur in the home, and most of those inside the throne room. A tight space consisting of hard, wet surfaces equals enormous risk to the human skeleton. There’s also the risk of paper cuts from using that store brand TP, not to mention the danger of scalding hot water, if they haven’t turned that off yet. Use public parks to do your business (and take advantage of all the free pinecones) and forego bathing entirely for the duration of your employment exile. Licking yourself like a cat adds much-needed minerals missing from your altered diet and offers the added benefit of deterring those pesky neighbors from getting close enough to ask how the job hunt is going.

Stay away from hospitals – This should be a strict policy. No place is more dangerous, especially for a healthy visitor. For one thing, hospitals are full of sick people. You wouldn’t think to amble into the heart of a leper colony, but the only difference between that and a hospital is that the hospital offers a much wider variety of illnesses, most of which they can’t seem to cure. For those fans of irony, they appear to have a handle on leprosy. Another reason to stay away … my grandmother always used to say that a person went to the hospital to die. If that sounds a bit old-fashioned, I’ll amend it for modern ears: people go to the hospital to receive a death sentence. Just standing inside the space encourages depression, which creates a deleterious effect on physical health. Still another reason to stay out of hospitals is the possibility (however remote) of encountering an otherwise unoccupied physician. Doctors are kin to the hyena – they instinctively know how to find the weak individual and then gather in a white-coated pack to set upon that defenseless soul. Just give them the slightest hint of physiological dysfunction and, before you know it, you’ll find yourself trapped inside an MRI tunnel with the meter running.

Don’t get arrested – It is perfectly understandable that circumstances such as we are now facing might tempt a law-abiding citizen to embark on a criminal rampage. Don’t do it. Even experienced thieves get pinched. While the thought of three meals a day and a weekly shower, courtesy of the state, might seem an improvement over your current lot, consider these two things: the health horror described above regarding restaurants increases exponentially in a prison kitchen and the shower ritual is a group affair involving people with whom you wouldn’t share an elevator under normal conditions. It is true that prisoners are afforded medical care, but it is of the sparest kind and usually reserved for victims of the shiv.

I’m probably forgetting something. The key is to continue to survive in the face of adversity. The job market will recover eventually, even though the days seem to continue to dawn to dark skies. All things must pass. This, too, shall retreat into distant memory. Someday, our grandchildren will sit at our feet as we regale them with the stories of times without cable television or clean underwear, of Sunday dinners of chicken broth and a side of citrus. It’s our duty to remind them, as our grandparents reminded us with their stories of the Great Depression, that people are built to withstand anything that nature, or the Federal Reserve, can throw at them.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Inception – Making False Reality Out of Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:03:00 +0000

There is an acknowledged structure in screenwriting, referred to as “the Paradigm” (apologies if I’m overusing the word lately, but it’s their word). Within this structure, plot and character development follow a pattern – in an order determined by Hollywood studios going back to the dawn of talkies – designed to create dramatic effect and keep the viewer engaged for the length of the picture. This is a truism of filmmaking, whether we’re examining the work of Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Walt Disney or Judd Apatow. It is manipulative just as any other method of communication might be, especially in fictional expressions of a particular form. Recognition of the manipulation at the time of its delivery is a matter of personal preference and conscious deliberation.

When viewing a particular genre of film, specifically science fiction with its built-in “what if” disclaimer, viewers are inclined to be less pejorative about the non-intuitive nature of the setting. The projected reality may not make complete sense, and the characters within may appear flat in comparison to their surroundings, but we subconsciously issue a license that allows the filmmaker some latitude in transporting us through it. The entire process doesn’t make sense when one reads it like this, which helps support the argument that film is unlike any other medium used for expressing the abstract notion of the idea.

Christopher Nolan created Inception out of an idea, constructing the film from an original concept, rather than adapting an existing work. This course has proven to be most effective in producing science fiction films, using 2001 – A Space Odyssey and The Matrix as immediate examples. Still, he faced the structured demands of the Paradigm and the binding constraints of Hollywood dogma in breathing life into his vision. Nolan’s concept revolves around the question, “What if we could insert ourselves into the dreams of others?” I’m certain that Spongebob Squarepants tried it once. However, Christopher Nolan represents a few steps up the evolutionary ladder from a sponge, inviting us to assume that his execution would include greater insights and fewer bubbles.

David Edelstein’s review in New York Magazine was one of a few slams that I read prior to seeing the film. His tone was unduly harsh (and judging by the attached reader comments, highly unpopular), but I understand the sentiment behind his words. I have a personal saying I use whenever faced with an unidentifiable logical breakdown: “There’s something wrong with the math.” Edelstein recognized something wrong within the formula, but he focused his attention primarily on the surface of the screen. Allow me to expand on your thoughts, David.

Flaw 1 – Motivation: Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), driven by the desire to see his children and the guilt he carries over the death of his wife, takes a tricky assignment and deadly risk. This is a major fail. The character moves freely throughout Europe and Asia, despite a murder charge in the United States. Are we dealing with a future without Interpol? Roman Polanski should be so lucky. If we presume that Cobb is a man with extraordinary skills of deception, he should figure out a way to get the kiddies on a plane for a quick visit. As for his psychological hand wringing over the dead wife, subsequent revelations make the whole guilt trip seem petty in comparison to the hell he derives from it. Moving on to the members of Cobb’s Inception Team, there is no reason outside of a dark theater for any of them, beyond mere greed, to participate in this operation. Because of the accelerated pace of the plot, not much time is left for Nolan to develop the secondary characters. All bow to the Paradigm.

Flaw 2 – The Saito Dream Sequences: The movie opens with the Saito dream (reappearing in its proper context at the climax), which is embedded within a higher-level dream that Cobb is using to audition his services to the Japanese executive. While I can follow the multiple levels of logic (Being a dream-within-a-dream, this is strictly of Saito’s creation, rather than a first-level mockup. Therefore, knowing of the dream’s existence allows Dom to later find Saito at the Limbo level and return him to the conscious world. Normally, Dom does not like going into environments with which he is familiar, but his wife no longer constitutes a threat at this point, allowing him new freedom.), it is obviously a convoluted circuit that requires multiple proofing. This is another outgrowth of the Paradigm; in order for Dom to save Saito at the end, he needs to know where Saito is. Nolan doesn’t understand that his construct flies over the heads of most of the viewing public. The accessibility of this key plot element is questionable.

Flaw 3 – The Bad Guys: Similar to the white blood cells in Fantastic Voyage, Nolan creates a dream defense mechanism from within … big guys with guns, protecting the dreamer from outside interference. Again, the Paradigm demands conflict and Nolan offers something entirely unreasonable to evolutionary purpose in order to satisfy the demand. He glosses over the process as some sort of industrial espionage counter-measure, but its nature as an implanted schema, combined with Dom’s own self-created saboteur that somehow manages to elude the same defenses, creates one more multi-layered logistical morass that defies simple explanation.

Given consideration to all of the above, the actual execution results in a very entertaining movie experience. I credit Nolan for thoroughly exercising his director chops and DiCaprio for working within his character throughout the film. The pacing permits only a couple of dead spots and the movie ending leaves things appropriately vague. My only recommendation, beyond seeing the film, is to commit to seeing it twice, allowing Nolan’s ideas to form fully before making a final judgment. I agree with Mr. Edelstein that the hype and praise surrounding this release is overdone and I’m willing to bet that after a second viewing, you’ll never want to see it again. Still, taken strictly as an exercise, Inception provides a cautionary example of the effect of the Paradigm on conceptual filmmaking.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Driving Through Danger Zones

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 01:07:00 +0000

I honestly can’t say whether I’m a good driver. I have some skills, am well versed on the rules of the road that most other drivers flout, but I do confess to being a might heavy on the gas pedal and extremely hard on tires and clutches. Therefore, you can take the following with a large stalactite of salt.

I have cheated death a couple of times while behind the wheel. Once, an old Ford pickup blew through a red light as I headed left into its path. I tried to accelerate through the turn to allow clearance, but the idiot behind the wheel of the truck veered into my lane instead of staying in his own. My brand new Taurus was T-boned directly on the driver’s side pillar, but because I was moving circularly, most of the energy went into spinning the car 180 degrees and dropping it on someone’s front lawn. The force of the collision threw me over to the passenger side of the bench seat when the seatbelt failed, but my only injury was a minor cut on my index finger from a pebble of broken safety glass. Interestingly, the airbags never deployed. The insurance company refused to declare the car a total loss, so the bodywork, frame straightening and suspension rebuild ended up costing them over twelve thousand dollars for a car that cost me fourteen. That work led, indirectly, to the next hair-raiser.

There is a downhill run I love on North Country Road in Mount Sinai that bottoms out into a hard right curve in front of a local church. My usual move, when alone in the car, was to accelerate into the downhill portion, glide down the first two thirds, and then brake hard for a moment before accelerating through the curve. It’s more fun with a stick, but I made do, being a family man with a Taurus. One night, after working a little later than usual, I arrived at the crest of the hill. The conditions were cold and misty and the track a little slick, so I let up slightly on the downward push to allow some margin for skidding. Prior to this, I had experienced some recent wheel chatter on the front passenger side when braking, but it didn’t seem to affect handling. Two-thirds of the way down, I pressed on the brake and felt a snap that went clear through to the steering wheel. The brakes were responding poorly, the steering was gone completely and I was heading down into a blind curve with no way to turn into it.

There is a steel guardrail mounted directly behind the curve, well placed for my unfolding dilemma. I found I could maneuver the car slightly with the brakes, which were favoring the driver’s side, by forcing the anti-lock system to kick in. The idea was to slide the car sideways through the curve and come to rest against the guardrail to avoid any head-on impact. The unknown factor lay with any oncoming traffic heading into the curve. Fortunately, my way was clear this time and I landed perfectly flat against the rail with no perceptible body damage. I found out later that the passenger-side tie rod had broken loose, thanks to a bolt and nut assembly improperly installed during the rebuild. Now, whenever I hear about a car suddenly going out of control, I recall that night and wonder how many people have died because of something so easily prevented. The fact is, soon after the Taurus came out of the shop, the chattering returned. I brought it back in and the mechanic added some Loctite to the bolt threads … problem solved.

That Taurus, the only automatic transmission-equipped car I have ever purchased, saved my life once and almost took it back the second time. When my marriage ended, I went back to manual transmissions, my need for control reinforced by experience on multiple levels. This leads us now into the next generation of drivers.

I have been trying to teach my daughter Sofia to drive my six-speed Civic SI. She’s not a confident driver, which is good, in a way, for an eighteen-year-old. I like the idea that she respects the enormity of responsibility attached to operating a car. I feel strongly that driving a manual transmission teaches drivers to pay better attention to the road, to the car, and to conditions that might affect a safe journey. Unfortunately, it’s turning into a battle of wills that I will ultimately lose. She already failed her first road test, after driving a predominance of automatics. I was hoping to convince her that, in overcoming the stick, she could overwhelm the automatic. The logic doesn’t seem to be working. I’ll hold my tongue, and my breath, as the next road test appointment approaches. I wish she would reconsider. I would much rather she struggle through some practice runs and look a little silly than see her alone on the road, unprepared to deal with what has happened to me.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Independence Day, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0000

I recall seeing a revival of the musical 1776 on the stage of Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., years after seeing the movie spun off from it. The live show failed to enthrall, bogged down by prancing choreography and severe recitation, along with my pedantic familiarity with the accepted history. I was also distracted by the Lincoln box looming over to my right, swathed in flags and black bunting, quietly threatening at any moment to unfurl and eject an armed actor from its mourning balcony. What I remember most about the show was the glare of the stage lighting. It gave the impression the signing of the Declaration of Independence took place on the sands of South Beach on a glorious afternoon, featuring men improperly dressed for the occasion. Then again, asking Benjamin Franklin to eschew knickers for a Speedo might push beyond the limits of avant-garde theater, let alone a national tour.

We are old enough as a nation to have collected a legion of mythical heroes, complete with the immutable mind pictures and sounds of events not witnessed by anyone living presently. We can imagine Patrick Henry, standing before the assembled burgesses in Virginia and shouting the words, “Give me liberty or give me death.” We can picture Nathan Hale reverse-mounted on a bareback horse, his hands tied behind him and a coarse rope noose looped around his neck, informing his red-coated executioners that “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” The beauty in these myths, as opposed to the ones carried forth from earlier ages, is in the unarguable fact some attributable someone recorded the moments for posterity around the time of their occurrence. Does this fact make the accounts any more accurate or unassailable than stories about a Minotaur or Mount Olympus? No, but why would anyone want to challenge the foundations of our national belief system?

We have evolved as a species with a talent for creating lies and exaggerations in order to describe our place in the universe. We apply the word “metaphorical” to the patently ridiculous. We excuse embellishment, couching it in terms such as “artistic license” or “dramatic effect.” My favorite sofa is “to the best of one’s recollection,” which implies one has had better recollections than the one currently in question. I prefer the term “bullshit” because of its all-purpose utility. History is full of bullshit for the simple reason that our daily lives reek of it. People find the truth uncomfortable and difficult to grip; a large, leaden ball of dangerous fact poised to drop onto otherwise unsuspecting toes. By comparison, a lie is as light as a faux feather, tickling egos and cushioning blows.

Of course, as a society we must make it our official policy to discourage such dishonest behavior. It is a sin to bear false witness. It is a crime to perjure oneself. It is unethical to misrepresent. We preach the tenets of honesty and wink, simultaneously. Is it not a little ironic that we lie about being liars, and what does that say about the accepted history surrounding our nation? I suppose it depends on the audience, since the art of the lie is in its shifting colors and adjustable frame. Young George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, and then confessing to his father that he “couldn’t tell a lie,” is a wonderful fable for second-graders. I’ve heard adults swear in an unwavering faith that it was true, and maybe it is. We can’t confirm the truth of the story, but it would be remarkable that a story about not telling a lie is a lie in itself.

We prize the concept of direct testimony. An eyewitness account usually trumps a deck of conflicting circumstantial evidence presented at trial. Hearsay is rarely admissible in court because of its nature as a filtered version of the truth. Yet, history is replete with hearsay and second-hand reporting. Even more important are the elements of historical events omitted from the record for any number of reasons, including national security and personal reputation. From time to time, the historical record is subject to revision due to some new unearthed factoid or the posthumous release of his or her private correspondence. At what point do we step back and question the entirety of that historical record?

Revisionism as currently practiced is clearly a further example of the bullshit principle at work. There is an interest vested somewhere in a claim to correct historical inaccuracy, whether it’s national pride, personal vindication or a simple thumbing of one’s nose at a collection of scholarly peers. There exists no place mark in the chronicle of humanity that guarantees us a thorough and unbiased telling of a particular moment in time or of all the people enveloped within that moment. Everything we think we know is subject to debate, and a mostly poor debate at that, considering the uneven reliability of the collective human almanac.

If we accept that everything we already know is, at best, of questionable veracity and if we can convince ourselves that everything new offered to us through the news media or that we see and hear over the airwaves comes without any factual warranty, we’re ahead of the game, finally. Perhaps we can categorize information based on the depth and breadth of its sources, ultimately declaring as confirmed truths maybe 1 % of what we thought we knew, with the remaining 99 % deemed apocryphal. First-person accounts without sufficient corroboration may live on as a version of the truth, rather than the whole of it. If one treats the telling of Ben Franklin’s kite flying experiment in the same manner as the story of Icarus flying too close to the Sun, we remain aware of the nature of the scientific principles involved and lose nothing, except our innocence. What we gain is something that’s been in dispute for exactly two hundred and thirty-four years: our independence.

Freedom of thought is not truly free unless we can remove the bonds that constrain new ideas. The bonds of assumption, convention and accepted truths are products of our collective history, rather than of personal experience. If history is flawed, it makes sense that our ability to comprehend present-day issues is defective. By changing our definition of Truth to something so narrow and well formed it leaves no doubt of universal acceptance, we can label everything else, rightfully, as bullshit. There is nothing wrong in accepting that the signing of the Declaration of Independence took place in Philadelphia in July, in the year 1776. There should be nothing wrong in imagining Benjamin Franklin attending the event dressed in anticipation of a cooling dip in the Delaware River.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Spy Next Door

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 04:38:00 +0000

When the cops come around and take a local resident into custody, it’s pretty standard to hear the neighbors chatting with members of the media, voicing surprise and offering words of support for the party under arrest. Yesterday, in towns and villages just like yours, this very scene played out in multiple instances as the FBI closed out a long investigation of a Russian-sponsored infiltration into the heart of middle class America.

The FBI placed ten people under arrest Sunday, with one other (at this writing) still at large. Trained by the Russian intelligence service, the SVR, and mostly placed in pairs as couples beginning in the mid-Nineties, their mission appears to be both vague and ambitious — to develop relationships with the influential and the knowledgeable, to obtain information regarding the CIA, US nuclear policy, relations with foreign powers, etc., and to recruit high-level government employees. Funny, I get most of that from the internet without all the fuss and muss of trying to corral a bunch of Russians set loose in our giant Disneyland.

The big question in all of this isn’t why the Russians did this. Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister at the time and a former KGB chief, has a natural affinity for undercover operations. Our why is his why not? Nor is it why the Justice Department, through two full administrations, allowed these people to operate (albeit under strict surveillance) in our country. It’s likely, over time, that the Russians became aware of our counter-intelligence activity, in a case of, we know that you know that we know…. The question is, why do it now? The official line given is that a prompt shutdown of the whole operation was due to one of the group scheduling a permanent return to Russia. Hmm … That sounds just a bit fishy. I have a better explanation.

Recently, the Obama administration has used the State Department to reestablish a dialog with Moscow, culminating with a recent visit by Russian President Medvedev to meet with the President. The timing of the arrests, along with the blaring publicity accompanying them, appears orchestrated to chill relations between the two countries. Consider that the charges are money laundering (for bringing in the payroll and expense money from South America), living under a false identity, and “belonging” to a spy ring. There appears to be no evidence suggesting that any of these spies were effective at doing their jobs. There appears to be no benefit to the US, strategically, to drop the hammer now.

So, who does benefit? For that, we need to flip the question around and decide who might feel threatened by closer ties between Russia and the United States. There’s always China, Inc. The economic expansion on the mainland is subject to many variables, some within the power of China’s leadership to control, such as relations with Taiwan (which have never been better) or the exchange rate of the Renminbi. What they can’t control is the availability of those natural resources necessary to sustain the expansion. Russia, along with Australia, is a key supplier of iron ore. Russia remains the primary source for nickel. While South Africa supplies the bulk of the world’s chromium, Russia is also a major producer. Access to these elements is a key to China’s continued growth. Any threat, in the form of state-sponsored boycott or slowdown of delivery, could be catastrophic. A Russian-US alliance represents a formidable wall in the path to China’s economic domination.

If you don’t like China, there’s always the European Union to consider. EU members, especially Germany and the former Soviet satellites, view any Russian partnership as a threat. For such an alliance to include Uncle Sam, the degree of hysteria mounts. There is no more powerful grouping, in terms of weaponry, than that of those Cold War adversaries. Together, they could easily hold the entire world hostage. For a Europe that’s known the devastation of total war, the mere possibility of facing such power is cause for nightmares. It would be in the European interest to short circuit any broad understanding in a Russo-American pact.

So, that spy next door, trimming the rhododendrons and driving the kids to school, is nothing compared to the operatives working within our own government, on behalf of China or the EU, to affect policy change through fiat. Hell, it’s just as likely that those spies grew to love America and might deign to lift a finger in anger against us; our bigger worry should be those real Americans lurking in the shadows of our most solid upright pillars. As the nosy neighbor tells the inquiring reporter – “I never, in my wildest imaginings, thought they could be against us.” The truth is, anyone can be against us. Keep your eyes open.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

We Regret to Inform You That Your Cream Cheese Has Expired

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 01:55:00 +0000

Supermarket shopping is a death-defying process. No, I’m not referring to the busloads of codgers cramming the aisles and barring all escape routes from a bakery department blaze. Nor do I consider as any big deal the risks involving the salmonella rinse featured in the processing of those bagged salads. I’ve developed immunity to the army of the living dead and to Mexican-borne diseases, the latter to the point where I could drink Tijuana Springs water, if anybody had the nerve to market it. I’m talking about the dangers lurking in the dairy section.

I’m no biologist. I don’t know what the exact health effects are for consuming milk-based products that are beyond shelf life. It can’t be a good thing. Spoilage is a concern for us, for the very reason that we don’t know what the consequences are. There must be a reason, beyond the risk of fouling the interior of the refrigerator, for putting dates on dairy products. I’ll assume that it’s safety-related, which brings us to our story.

In late April 2010, I was shopping at Waldbaum’s in Centereach. When one is unemployed, going after sale items becomes more important than ever. A particular brand of cream cheese was on special. I grabbed one, turned it over to check the date and saw that only a few days of shelf life remained. There was a store clerk arranging things in an adjacent refrigerator bin and I walked over to him. My intent was strictly informational, just a heads up that Mister Cream Cheese was ready to push up daisies. When I informed him of the situation, he took the container from me and said the following:

“That’s okay, somebody will buy it.” With that, he returned the container to the shelf and I laughed.

I guess I didn’t expect that level of crass honesty. I don’t know why not, since I’m an acknowledged king of the form. In my own defense, I do draw the line at poisoning customers. Amazed, I took my fresher version of the product, went home and reported the incident to corporate headquarters. I received a reply a day or two later, Case Number 540363-A, informing me that they took such reports seriously and would address the issue at the appropriate level. I didn’t expect, nor did I receive, a follow-up report regarding any corrective action taken. I haven’t shopped at the Centereach store since.

Moving ahead to today – another Waldbaum’s, the one in Selden, and yet another cream cheese event. This time, it wasn’t a case of the product nearing its demise. No, this time the date read “May 21, 2010.” In neither case was I looking for expired goods; I just happened to pick the one. Another store clerk loomed and I greeted him with the bad news of a package left to rot, or worse. His reply:

“It was an accident.” It came out so quickly, I’m convinced it was a rehearsed line. I wasn’t having any of it. I told him it doesn’t meet the definition of an accident, especially since it’s happened to me so recently. Neglect isn’t an accident; it’s a failure to apply a level of care equal to the responsibility attached. It was like talking to a stuffed animal.

We have our corrective action, for what little it’s worth. Someone at corporate likely decided that the best course would be to stay the course and have employees plea ignorance and apologize when caught. Otherwise, sell off the existing stock and let dates be damned. I’m challenging anybody in the legal department at A & P Corporate to produce a timely, clearly worded and properly executed procedure to prevent what amounts to a major violation of local and state health codes.

Warning – this is my bailiwick. I may not be working now, but when I was, I inspired fear as a quality assurance auditor. I don’t fall for word tricks or trip over circular flowchart logic. I know when things don’t work and I know why they don’t, and root causes usually lay with executive personnel. Clearly, I’ve just given a good reason to keep me out of the employment stream, boat rocker that I am.

You may ask where the aforementioned governmental bodies charged with enforcing health codes are hiding. I don’t know and I don’t care. This is strictly a “buyers beware” issue. I check the dates. Unfortunately, those fossils shuffling around the produce department and jamming the aisles may assume (wrongly) that someone is protecting their interests. I guess we can ascribe this as a method for thinning the herd, but its coming to light won’t play well for the AARP radical set and could lead to boycotts. This issue demands some sort of address.

There is, of course, a fix for this. Add product lot numbers to the barcode SKU. It probably won’t happen, but think of the possibilities. Supermarkets are tracking shopping habits, offering discounts only when scanning a personalized shopper card during checkout. They know what I’m buying and when I’m buying it. With the added lot information, the opportunities for customer-specific offerings are endless. It’s not limited to dairy and other limited shelf life items, either.

Sure, that can of chili is dated out to the 22nd century (and guaranteed to survive a nuclear blast), but there does come a time when the larder needs to be rotated, just as much in our pantries as in the markets where we shop. An e-mail or postal reminder, with a coupon attached, of the need to replace or restock a food item will generate additional sales for the supermarket. While we’re there, we might pick up some milk and eggs, or even cream cheese. In the meantime, I’ll sit back and wait for the court order to show-cause why this post should remain up. I’ll invite the judge to meet at a local Waldbaum’s and watch me show some cause.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Why I Follow Colson Whitehead

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 05:24:00 +0000

I am not a stalker, not in the classic sense. I huddle in a dark corner of cyberspace and watch while people expose themselves in 140 characters or less. I follow them without leaving my chair and observe their deepest thoughts flowing down my LCD screen like the striping virtual reality symbols from The Matrix. Some people, in turn, treat me in the same manner. I am a Tweep.

Twitter has become an obsession for millions around the world. This is not to say that everyone registered with a Twitter account is obsessive about it, but the number of those who are represents the going rate of obsession in general. Internet pornography is still much bigger, although instances of 140 characters in a single setting are rare and usually signal an impending bukkake exhibition. Little foo-foo doggies are also big on the obsession scale, in their little foo-foo way, if that’s your idea of fun. My idea of fun with such animals is both cruel and sporting, and involves football goalposts.

On Twitter, we get to choose whom to follow, as much as any choice is a choice at all, rather than some predetermined reflex born from inheritance and freakish childhood experience. I’m not specifically pointing out the German people for the whole Hitler era, although that is a classic example of a choice making itself and sticking fast. Decisions are more plastic on Twitter; we can stop following a particular account with a mouse-click. It’s commitment lite, and cheaper than a Vegas wedding. Still, I don’t “unfollow” capriciously – it’s usually in response to a first strike by a mutual Twitter friend. An immature reaction? Agreed, but I don’t care, so there.

Colson Whitehead is a celebrated novelist, just obscure enough that many of the people reading this never heard of him. Neither had I, until early this year when the e-mail arrived from The Center for Fiction in Manhattan trumpeting his appearance to speak on the “Craft” of writing. I think the cost was ten dollars to get in. As a writer, I’m wanting in many respects and I’ll take the help wherever I can get it. Here was a real-life successful contemporary novelist willing to share his experience and the money seemed trifling in comparison to the value. I made my reservation for one and looked forward to the event. I was so excited I sent out a tweet: Heading into NYC tomorrow evening to hear Colson Whitehead tell me why no one's buying my fiction. I already know ... it's because it sucks 10:34 PM Feb 22nd via web

It was a rainy February evening. The trip in on the LIRR from Ronkonkoma was uneventful, as was the walk from the Bryant Park subway station to 47th Street, except for the cold, wet sponge that kept swabbing my clothes and missing my umbrella. The Center is a fairly new entry on the scene, squatting in the space previously occupied by the Mercantile Library. Walking in, I felt the dry air of an ancient bookstore and smelled that decaying odor of old books and older people standing guard over them. They perked, not unlike casually dressed prairie dogs, members of an intellectual patrician coven peculiar to New York (though not nearly upper crust nor ambitiously friendly and fortunate that Manhattan lacks trailer parks), estimating the strangers among them with a visual frisk. I checked in, removed the wet coat, wrapped the umbrella, parked them on a rack and headed up the stairs.

A quick aside, because I think it’s important. I usually don’t include photos in my posts. Maybe I should, if only as a distraction. I do so in this case because Colson Whitehead appears to be of African descent. He’s good-looking in a gawky masculine way, resembling a cross between Lenny Kravitz and Tracy Chapman (though I can’t imagine the E-Harmony tabulator spitting out that match).

His background, however, belies the physical appearance. He attended a toney private school in Manhattan and graduated from Harvard. He made his bones at the Village Voice, the vanguard of White Liberalism. Besides the four books, he has written essays describing a post-racial vision for America. I’m 100% behind him on that, with the added pragmatic view that people still have eyes and still lean towards snap judgments based solely on visual information. It’s an intrinsically human reaction to massage sensory data with symbolic identifiers. We see it, attach a thought to the sight, and put that thought into words. The schematic of the brain sets the route and asserts an impulse.

I never cared for the term African-American, if only because it automatically assumes that every Black person in America is American, which doesn’t jibe with a trans-global existence. We need to improve on it, if only for the time required for Colson to work out the post-racial conundrum. I nominate the term Africanish. It satisfies the demand to describe the external visage without assuming too much more. I will use Africanish, when appropriate, for the balance of the piece.

I found the room filled with chairs, mostly empty, upon my arrival. I took a spot several rows back to the far right of the podium, next to an old oak table conveniently placed against the wall to hold my bottle of water and my notebook. Yes, I was prepared to take notes … I’m such a dope. The room began to fill with a variety of different human forms – young and old, male and female, Caucasian and Africanish. It seemed to be a great turnout and we all awaited the guest speaker.

Heads turned and a few stragglers rushed to find seats as a tall Africanish man with long hair tied in a ponytail loped towards the front, towing an entourage of old biddies whose major literary claim lay somewhere in their deep past as students at NYU, maybe trying to orally convince Gregory Corso that he wasn’t gay.

Old Biddy in a younger body: (Wipes the edge of her mouth with a lace hankie) Well?
Gregory Corso: Sorry, it didn’t work. I still prefer men.
Old Biddy: Are you sure? You seemed to be enjoying it.
Corso: Well, that’s because you look like a guy.

Sitting in the seat to my left was a young, very serious-looking Africanish man in a business suit, brandishing a Blackberry. I’m not shy about engaging strangers in conversation, but I’m not so doltish as to ignore the invisible wall when raised. I respected his No Trespassing sign and focused my attention toward the front of the room as the introduction rambled forth.

Properly announced, Colson Whitehead, recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Grant, winner of several awards for writing and runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize, began his hour-long presentation with the following sentence.

“I was born a poor black child. I remember the days, sittin' on the porch with my family...”

Yeah, I knew at the outset that this wasn’t going to be very educational. Colson immediately expanded on that throwaway line from The Jerk by describing his background and the reasons why he didn’t identify himself as a strictly Black author detailing the Black Experience in America. He felt he didn’t possess the proper credentials.

I do him an injustice by not relaying the witty candor with which he described himself. Colson Whitehead is a humorist at heart and as self-effacing as he is a master at pointed observation. However, as the evening wore on and he delighted the literati in the crowd with satirical jabs at old wordsmiths and critics, peppered with insider references that eluded at least half of the audience, I could feel the growing sense of disappointment, and not just my own, circling the room. His message to the young (and, in my case, not so young) writers was simply that there was no “craft” involved in an endeavor as personal as writing.

The young man next to me spent a good part of the hour staring at the screen of his Blackberry. I spent my time scribbling notes in an outraged vein, not so much on my own behalf but rather for the more impressionable young people squirming in their folding chairs, awaiting the touch of the golden hand of Calliope while enduring the launch of a comedy career. I made a promise to write about the experience, but only after its image shrunk to a dot in my rearview mirror. Check another one off my to-do list.

Here’s the postscript. I haven’t read any of Colson Whitehead’s books yet, because I wanted to get this out of the way first. I know I’m going to end up being a huge fan of his writing. It’s inevitable, and that sort of allegiance forgives all. I wanted to make certain to get my ten dollars worth before I forked over more dough for his books.

In the meantime, I’ve been following him on Twitter. That began soon after I tweeted about attending the Center for Fiction event. He replied to my tweet, something to the effect that he had the same problem. The exact wording is lost in the Twitter ether, probably deleted by the author. His Twitter entries are witty, intelligent and generous. He’s the only person I know confident enough to use the word torpor in a tweet. That’s high-octane English, my friends, and always worthy of a retweet. You can join me in following Colson on Twitter - @colsonwhitehead. His website URL is http://colsonwhitehead.com

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

“I Started at the Top and Worked My Way Down” – Orson Welles, Hollywood, and the Curse of Kane

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 05:16:00 +0000

The list of films in which Orson Welles played a part, as director, actor, producer, screenwriter (or any combination thereof), stands in direct contradiction to accepted Hollywood cinematic traditions, for Welles tried to raise the intellectual level of American filmmaking. Playing the part of Socrates, he created his own “Empire of the Mind” for an Athens represented by a palm-treed community so absorbed in its own manufactured landscape of cloying device and tactical sentiment that its failure to listen led directly to the loss of its preeminence in the American entertainment industry. Unlike the old Greek philosopher, Welles the artist succumbed early in life to the quicksand of institutional apathy and struggled uselessly against the greed of fearful toadies, who personified a force as natural and unyielding as gravity. It is no coincidence the power of the studios followed the declining influence of Hollywood’s greatest thinker. It began and ended with RKO Pictures and Citizen Kane.

Welles was a wunderkind, the product of a doomed family unit, cultivated by foster care and wealthy guardianship. He first made his mark on the Irish stage while on holiday and returned home determined to repeat his brief overseas success. A few fortunate events led to greater opportunities, already well documented, which molded him as a performer and director. His mixture of artistic subversion and carefree risk-taking, which worked well on both the stage and in radio, led to the offer of a two-picture deal by RKO at age twenty. It is at this age, two years before the contested premiere of Citizen Kane, that Welles begins to die.

The RKO contract ceded to Welles an enormous amount of discretion except in two areas – the choice of project and budgetary limits – and RKO enforced both on him with a dullard’s touch. For instance, Citizen Kane was not Welles’ first, or even second, choice for his inaugural film. Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, a Victorian-era thriller set in the Congo and already adapted and narrated by Welles for the Mercury Theater radio program, was his first choice. The studio went along with the idea, up to the point when Welles presented his proposed (presumably ambitious) budget, at which time executives scuttled it.

The next choice was to adapt Nicholas Blake’s (pen name for Cecil Day-Lewis, father of actor Daniel) espionage novel The Smiler with the Knife, but studio executives intervened once more, unsure of Welles’ choice of Lucille Ball for the female lead and of his proposal to record the entire movie using point-of-view shots. The studio finally gave permission to proceed on a project created out of an idea originally offered by writer Herman Mankiewicz as a form of revenge after a falling out with Marion Davies, mistress of William Randolph Hearst.

Mankiewicz, working separately using notes from Welles, produced a screenplay that portrayed a detailed caricature of Hearst. Welles took that screenplay and performed a drastic modification of the Kane character, while leaving in elements of the Hearst legend. The Charles Foster Kane we see in the film is in no way similar in personality or behavior to William Randolph Hearst. Welles took pains to meld several character studies of famous people, as well as a few autobiographical touches, to create Kane.

Those changes didn’t matter. The story goes that a Hearst gossip columnist (either Hedda Hopper or Louella Parsons, depending on which account one believes) went to a preview screening of the film and reported the unflattering portrayal to her boss. Hearst declared war on the entire movie industry, demanding that RKO cancel release of the film. Other studios, in fear of those closely guarded secrets held by the Fourth Estate spilling out into the public, took up a collection and offered to buy the entire project, including negatives and screen tests, from RKO. RKO held firm and released the film in the form of Welles’ final edit, as per contract.

The Hearst newspaper empire ignored the existence of the film and refused to accept advertisements for its showing. Box office results in the US were fair, at best, certainly held down by the muting of the Hearst tabloids. RKO made back its production costs and little else. Word-of-mouth exhibited a mixed reaction, with many in the audience confused by the multiple narrative strands spooling off the reels, while some critics applauded its freshness. Rather than re-release the film for a wider showing the following year, as was customary, the studio put Citizen Kane into storage, not to be seen again for fifteen years. For RKO, this first taste of Orson Welles soured them in future dealings with him.

The second contracted film, The Magnificent Ambersons, turned into a disaster on many levels. First, RKO renegotiated Welles’ final edit approval out of his contract. Also, the project ran behind its production schedule and the studio saw fit to distract Welles with another film, Journey Into Fear, in which he is credited as Producer and co-writer (along with Joseph Cotton), as well as appearing as an actor. Still more distracting, an offer to produce a documentary about South America was made by Nelson Rockefeller and Jock Whitney, who both had a financial interest in RKO. Welles accepted the opportunity, knowing that the Ambersons project still required a final edit. He ended up leaving that task in the hands of the studio while working in Brazil on the Rockefeller/Whitney documentary (It’s All True, which was never completed). The Magnificent Ambersons failed to connect with the audience at the preview of Welles’ rough cut, prompting the studio to remove 40 minutes and add a happy ending, in contrast with the director’s stated vision.

In 1942, there was an upheaval in the executive hierarchy at RKO, and every one with a remaining fondness for Welles saw himself on the outside, as an accounting of the three Welles projects turned in a deficit of nearly $2 million. Time moved on and Welles found plenty of work as an actor (He, along with Joseph Cotton, has the distinct honor of acting in the number one movie on the list of both the American and British Film Institutes – Citizen Kane for the AFI and The Third Man for the BFI). He also performed occasionally behind the camera (most notably as writer/director of The Stranger and Touch of Evil). We remember his final years, hawking a California winery and appearing as a guest on television talk shows, not sitting on as much as surrounding the chair across from the host, while performing minor parlor tricks.

Could it all have been different for him and for Hollywood? If we could alter certain elements, would it produce any real gain? For instance, did the movie Citizen Kane benefit so much from the gargantuan portrayal of the Kane estate Xanadu, that carbon copy of Hearst’s famous San Simeon retreat? Would the movie have suffered greatly if Welles chose a less comparable form of residential isolation? It was there, in the opening newsreel sequence, that everyone in the audience, not just Hopper or Parsons, could see the similarity to Hearst forming. Welles saw it and chose to ignore what he saw, content that his revision of the character would dampen any direct comparisons. It was his first mistake.

The screenplay credit for Herman Mankiewicz was also a signal for Hearst that an ill wind blew through the sprocket holes. The feud between the writer and Davies (and, by extension, Hearst) was well known in their respective circles. As it stands, the final screenplay bore very little resemblance to the one turned in by Mankiewicz. Could Welles have bought him off the credit, at least to the extent of employing an on-screen pseudonym? On the other hand, is it possible that these people, especially Mankiewicz, were so arrogantly perched in a shadow that they sat blind to the enormous power of the Hearst media machine?

What would a large box office result and timely re-release have meant to the studio? Or Hearst’s silence, for that matter? RKO probably wouldn’t have put Welles on a leash, one that he struggled against during the Ambersons episode, before escaping to Buenos Aires. What would it have meant to Hollywood to have a film of a similar impact to Citizen Kane released so soon afterward? Could The Magnificent Ambersons been the bookend piece Welles needed to not only ensure a blank check moving forward, but to also change the perspective of developing filmmakers in a way that encouraged a heightened level of artistic risk-taking?

In 1956, RKO Pictures rereleased Citizen Kane and it was at this time that the movie was widely acclaimed as a work of high art and cinematic genius. Unfortunately, television had already taken away a large portion of the audience from movie theaters, to the extent that the studios finally lifted their ban on television appearances by film actors that same year.

The studios were shrinking. Louis B. Mayer was out at MGM and would soon be gone from the earth. Darryl F. Zanuck left 20th Century Fox to start his own production company. Warner Brothers sold the rights to all their pre-1950 films. RKO Pictures was undergoing a transformation into a multi-media holding company; indeed, all of the studios were turning to television either for investment purposes or as an outlet for alternative productions. Hollywood was in full retreat, able to compete only with lavishly expensive, high-risk extravaganzas and flawed technological gimmicks, such as Cinerama.

Here we have an intersection in the timeline, just when Citizen Kane becomes viewed as iconic, long past its ability to encourage a new direction and save the infrastructure that helped to create it. It is impossible to estimate the degree to which an initial financial success for Welles may have influenced the bean-counters and voices of studio authority in terms of artistic license. It is just as impossible to imagine the great works lost to fate due to the miscalculations of everyone involved, including Welles. It is a loss on so incalculably large a scale that it rivals the deaths of past civilizations. Consider this: is the loss of the contents of the Great Library of Alexandria any less hurtful if we find that the library existed only as an idea in the mind of one man?

Orson Welles knew his place and, to his credit, he understood his own role in the ironical turn that led from a promising beginning to an unsatisfying end. That he sipped from the poison cup slowly and continued to interact, if only in the most peripheral forms of conversation, is of some benefit. Generations of people heard the man speak of his short triumph and lasting failure, giving us all an opportunity to mourn the truth and blissfully dream the lie of the happier ending.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Politics From the Sidelines

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Sun, 16 May 2010 15:29:00 +0000

During the fourth quarter of the deciding game of the NBA Eastern Conference semifinals, the Celtic’s Glenn “Big Baby” Davis passed up an open jump shot from the elbow, deciding instead to drive to the basket. He missed the contested shot, which led to a Cleveland fast break and a shooting foul at the other end. Facing his team’s bench from his slot along the paint in preparation for the free throws, Davis could be seen shouting across to the sideline that he “f***ed up.” A quick pan over to the Boston bench revealed that his teammates were the source of criticism and targets of his vulgar confession. Anyone who has played competitive team sports knows this is a lesson in perspective. It’s all too easy to analyze the failure of others from a seat on the bench.

It is so in party politics, as well. When Gordon Brown visited Queen Elizabeth last week, informing the monarch and the British people of his failure to maintain control as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party, he was playing, in effect, the role of “Big Baby.” Viewed from the outside, one might wonder why the negotiations to establish a coalition with Social Democrats eluded Labour’s effort. Surely, a tenuous coalition intended to maintain leadership position through to the next election cycle trumped the alternative admission to Her Majesty that he blew the layup. Yet, party leadership decided that it was prudent to abdicate, so Brown willingly splayed himself before the Queen.

The conclusion seems to indicate that, after thirteen years in power, the Labour Party grew tired of answering the shout-downs by Conservatives across the aisle. Labour ministers sat envious of the comfortable position of minority blamelessness in an increasingly complex political environment and decided to take advantage of recent election results to form a line of retreat. It is now their turn to grouse and snipe over national conditions without the burden of accountability. Sweet.

Here in the United States, the complexities found in parliamentary politics boil down to the relatively simpler two-party system, with both major parties each wielding its own extremist weapon. Republicans link arms with Conservatives, as Democrats do with Liberals, and both use their minor brethren as a spiked club to pummel the platforms and philosophies of their opponent. The resulting battles resemble a succession of kamikaze attacks against our ship of state, no matter which party holds control at a given moment.

Historically, we are our own worst enemy in times of relative peace (constant police actions aside), with the out-of-power party intent on limiting national success during the opponent’s watch. It’s impossible to measure the cost of political paralysis at all levels of government, but one could easily conjure a number in the hundreds of billions. This raises no great call for concern, if only because both sides consider national self-mutilation a serviceable political tool.

As the perceived stakes rise, the stridency increases. Opposition to government policy, as measured on the American Panic Meter, crosses into the red zone more often these days. Based on the current dialog, we are closer to civil war than at any time in the past century. To be blunt, our only salvation lay with the fractious nature and latent stupidity evident among the individuals cast as spokespersons at both extremes. They reveal themselves as opportunists eventually, moving into position to collect fees and honoraria and using those platforms to espouse alarmism at rising volume levels. Centrists of varying shades may be swayed briefly by the windy blasts, but their roots remained fixed to the ground in which they were planted. This strong middle remains our vanguard against either side of the rhetorical fence, but its nature to stay silent also threatens true progress.

The best and worst argument against the Centrist is in the self-limiting failure to take a pronounced stand. In this respect, moderate thinkers populate the bench, pointing out the flaws and faults of those who take the risk of acting on their convictions. At the same time, who better to make a true assessment than one who has a clear view of the entire court? If the roles reversed, this country would be a crashing bore and we might all begin to feel the strain of disinterest. The last time that happened, our nation’s power expanded and spawned the unrest of the Sixties. That alone argues against a policy of stasis, for no single condition can withstand the power of an opposing force forever.

Thus, we watch as each side takes its shots in a never-ending game that moves end to end without any clear and lasting advantage. What remains certain is the notion that it’s more fun to pick apart decisions than it is to execute them and it’s easier to accept failure than to fight to the last breath. A millennium of political reality describes a varying cast of doers and don’t-doers, with the rest of us alternately cheering, crying and hiding our eyes as the clock ticks down.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

An Argument for Open-Carry … from a Gun Hater

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Thu, 13 May 2010 06:28:00 +0000

My friend Ricky likes guns. Correction: He’s a hobbyist, so it’s fair to say he loves them. He owns enough legally registered firepower to arm a small insurrection. Ricky is a responsible owner, keeping his armory locked in a big gun safe, unloaded and clean. He keeps trying to interest me in going to the range, but I won’t bite. As inquisitive as I am about the mechanics of firearms, I have no interest in squeezing a trigger. That makes Ricky sad. And when Ricky is sad, he calls people names, such as “Commie Pinko Liberal,” along with others I won’t mention.

Ricky is a God-knows-what degree black belt in karate so, for him, the gun thing isn’t necessarily a defensive reflex. However, when we go back and forth on the issue of gun safety, he usually falls back to the argument of what I would do if confronted by an armed criminal. It’s a good argument, since the answer for me is limited to flight, surrender or certain death. Still, I don’t feel the need to arm myself. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the threat. I just don’t attach the same level of concern to the possibility as I do the fear of a drugged-up or drunken driver careening into my car. All the same, I understand the issue of proliferation regarding illegal weapons enough to argue for universal open-carry laws.

We’re from New York, so our gun laws are both robust and conflicting, and largely dependent on local jurisdiction. Certain counties upstate do not specifically prohibit openly carrying handguns, while the same act in Manhattan will get you a bunk next to Plaxico Burress. Since New York does not recognize any out-of-state permits, non-residents travelling through the Empire State on their way to a turkey shoot in West Virginia are breaking one local gun law or another at some point during their traversal. To paraphrase, if you can make it through here, you can make it through anywhere.

In many states, open-carry remains unregulated, while concealed carry nearly always requires some sort of permit (Illinois and Wisconsin are the only two states that do not issue carry permits, concealed or otherwise). If it gets cold and Hopalong dons a coat, such an innocent action immediately reclassifies the weapon as “Concealed.” Possession of that same handgun in an automobile is often equally restricted. Contrary law helps turn gun control into a heated issue. Nationally recognized regulation could put the entire Second Amendment argument to rest.

In some states, regulation is so porous that, while prohibited from purchasing handguns from federally licensed dealers, convicted felons may still openly carry such weapons in public. That circumstance, while currently rare, blows a small hole in my friend’s argument about self-defense. It also brings out the Gun Lobby, which is uncharacteristically lukewarm to the concept of open-carry. I think I know why – universal regulation usually attaches itself to universal permission. The only way to get everyone on board with open-carry is through strict oversight. This is where I climb aboard.

If you told me that open-carry permits required persons to be:

• 21 years old or older
• Certified as trained in firearm use and safety
• Free from conviction on any felony or violent misdemeanor charge
• The registered owner of the weapon carried

… then I’m all for a national open-carry handgun policy, with one proviso; that possession of any weapon while legally impaired or intoxicated result in a mandatory prison sentence. I’m not worried about sober persons discharging their weapons, since most jurisdictions already have laws on the books covering the wheres and whens of that. We won’t suddenly find ourselves ducking a rain of bullets. On the contrary – this is similar to the policy of Mutually-Assured Destruction, which has somehow kept everyone from burning to a thermonuclear-fired crisp after all these years of flag-waving and shoe banging.

I know my friend Ricky will find something in this to complain about, even though I’m willing to offer open-carry within a car, as long as the weapon remains holstered against the body. It doesn’t matter – he’ll gripe about it and call me bad names. I know … he’ll want to wear his coat. Too bad, buddy. You can’t have everything, but you’ll have your Glock to keep you warm.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

A Rage Against “Inglourious Basterds”

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Fri, 07 May 2010 06:56:00 +0000

Every Thursday is Movie Night, which allows a chance to catch up on the backlog or revisit a previous favorite film. Tonight, we viewed Inglourious Basterds, which is not only playing havoc with Mr. Spellchecker, but also with my sense of what is lacking in what we view as a form of art. Incredibly sloppy in terms of continuity, egregiously paced to a drag-out length and stylized to the point that no character of any value can penetrate the bogus scenery, this film is an example of an entire industry giving one of its own a pass simply because they were jazzed by the subject matter.

We’ll examine Christopher Waltz in depth in a moment. I want to cover the many faux pas, obvious in an initial viewing, which lay squarely at the feet of writer/director Quentin Tarantino. First, when using subtitles for translation, it isn’t common practice to project the untranslated foreign word. The reason it isn’t common practice is that such activity is pointless. Yet, the words oui, merci and mademoiselle crop up on the screen throughout scenes where the dialog is in French. Either don’t include words in the subtitles or translate the entire sentence verbatim.

Next, Melanie Laurent’s character Shosanna, in whose very name Tarantino continues to hit the wrong keys. The correct spelling is Shoshanna and is of Middle Eastern origin. Of all the members of her doomed family, hers is the only name not plucked directly out of the Book of Genesis. In diverging from the pattern, the name crashes against his established comic book borders and leaves a puddle that’s both distracting and unnecessary. More on her later.

The Basterds themselves represent a confused effort to establish empathy. In spite of its many flaws, the characters that comprised the Dirty Dozen displayed individual personality and voice. Conversely, Tarantino creates depth only with those non-Jewish members who join later (German Sergeant Stiglitz and British Lieutenant Hicox). The original recruits play cardboard cutout cowboy/soldiers, scalping their way through Occupied France at the behest of Brad Pitt’s overacted mountain man, Aldo Raine. Considering the amount of time wasted in listening to David Bowie’s theme from Cat People (included because, when you think of World War Two, you think David Bowie, right?), the minutes might have been better utilized in developing at least some of the Jewish soldiers.

Christopher Waltz won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as the SS Colonel Hans Landa. Not to besmirch the achievement, the fact remains he played the leading role and should not have qualified under the Supporting category. Lead Actor should not be confused with billing order, which places Brad Pitt at the top. Nomination slotting is an annual game the Academy plays with producers who want to improve their position to capture awards. That everyone agrees with the result does not change the unethical nature of the process.

On to continuity, quickly. In the scene immediately after the capture of Aldo Raine and Sergeant Donowitz, seated at a table across from Colonel Landa, we initially see Brad Pitt’s bowtie turned nearly vertical. A cutaway later, we see it set straight, in spite of having his hands cuffed behind him. This is stupid. As minor as such things as ties and cigarette ashes and levels of liquid in a glass appear to be, failing to maintain the illusion of reality by assuming that we won’t notice is simply bad manners. For the five minutes of credits that wind down the end of a movie, you’d think one of those Sammy Slickers would have the responsibility to pay attention to previous shots and point out any variance.

Back to Melanie Laurent, aka Shosanna Dreyfus, aka Emmanuelle Mimieux. As told through the opening scene narrative, her family is hiding from the Nazis in Perrier LaPadite’s isolated dairy farm. The wide vista (more on that soon) and the small size of the house appear too exposed to provide the level of cover one would assume necessary to keep an entire family hidden for long. That she manages to escape to Paris on foot, find non-Jewish family members to take her in and establish a new identity is so far-fetched, even given the depth of unreality permuting the entire film, my ability to suspend disbelief is stretched beyond recovery.

Finally, Tarantino’s stated homage to the genre of spaghetti westerns falls flat, further damaging the impact of the film. Sergio Leone, whether purposefully or through necessity, used a large grain film stock that resulted in an impressionistic feel for the scorched desert setting of his movies. A short depth of field left objects in the distance wavering in an otherworldly shimmer. In contrast, Tarantino opens with fine grain and long focal point, eliminating the effect altogether. Also in contrast to Leone’s hell on earth depiction of the Old West, Tarantino’s Occupied France seems pristine, ignoring the effects of the recent Blitzkrieg and subsequent Allied bombing raids.

In Hollywood, the good pitch is everything. For this project, it probably started out with, “What if the Jews killed Hitler? Picture The Dirty Dozen meets To Be or Not To Be.” It obviously worked as a pitch. As a strict military history discussion, it might be argued, at least metaphorically, that the Jews did kill Hitler. To take such a position literally, even in a fantasy telling, is as incomprehensible as the results in Inglourious Basterds, with two and a half hours of my time added to the death toll.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Men are from Kansas, Women are from Missouri

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:57:00 +0000

Gender-clash is a well-worn path, a gully threatening to burrow down and widen into a Grand Canyon dividing the sexes. It’s due to a basic lack of understanding; misunderstanding ourselves while also failing to grasp the motivations that drive others. Issues with less depth have caused shooting wars, yet we don’t yet have a United Nations equivalent to monitor the crises brewing along the male/female border.

You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to

Let’s make this clear at the outset – we all conjure a version of Oh, shut up in our minds at some point during conversations with members of the opposite sex. It’s not a question of the validity of a particular point; it’s more a result of not having Douglas Adam’s BabelFish handily translating the spoken words into relatable mind pictures. When the sexes interact verbally, we all assume that a shared language guarantees some level of understanding. That’s an incorrect assumption. Words fail, constantly, to express the thoughts behind them and doubly so when the gender difference bends their meaning.

I want an honest answer.

Women ask questions. For men, such questions arrive attached to a lit fuse. Does this dress make me look fat? Men learn early on to don the bomb-squad gear before answering. Such adaptive behavior makes them seem uncooperative and withholding, which calls their honesty into question. By contrast, other women can answer that same question in a forthright manner because they know they’re expected to offer an honest opinion that will be viewed as helpful, no matter its tone. Men are expected to reinforce a woman’s feeling of attractiveness, truth be damned.

I have three children – Cody, Alicia and my husband Ed.

Men make messes. Women clean up after them. This is a mutually enabling behavior that society is always reinforcing. The classic example is in the act of human reproduction. It’s not that men are intent on making babies. Generally speaking, they don’t give it much thought. However, the aftermath of coitus often leads to a series of escalating events that climax with a trip to the maternity ward. Susan Smith and that ilk aside, women love having children. They’re hard-wired for it. Men, on the other hand, have trouble girding up to the process of parenthood. It seems to them an awful lot of bother just so they can be relegated to the position of Mommy’s helper. Most buy into the role eventually, but I believe, at the outset, the common thread speaks to a desire to join the Peace Corp, or Al Qaeda. In this respect, men undergo the change much earlier than women do, evident in the sudden loss of hair, the increased belly fat and the gradually expanding wardrobe of wrinkled golf shirts. All of which says Dad.

All the men agreed he was a man’s man. They just didn’t know what that meant.

Men don’t ask questions. It’s a stubborn refusal to admit their failure to comprehend the world around them. Most want to believe that they are in control of some aspect of their lives. The concept of Deterministic reality is championed mostly by younger men, who cling to the idea that they played a positive role in affecting their personal timeline. It takes a while for the truth to sink in. Then, they start attending church services and wait to die. It’s sad to consider that most married men are numbed to death.

Women are from Missouri

Women demand proof. You can’t just say I love you to a woman and expect to be taken at your word. The love needs to be expressed in multiple aspects, like a Zen E-Harmony quiz. Granted, they have no reason to trust us. We threw away our credibility when we failed to throw away that six-year-old prophylactic and neglected to mention our other three current girlfriends. The Tiger Woods/Jesse James marriage fiascoes certainly do not promise men a beneficial reaction from the other side, with the exception of those men working as private investigators. The litmus test for reliability in a relationship is nearing the level of a witch dunking. If you drown, you’re okay.

You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.

In spite of the ordeal inherent in bringing these opposite entities together, the biological element continues to carry the day. Makeup, short skirts, six-pack abs and deep tans work in tandem with the hormone army to keep the human factory working overtime. There is no activity as important, or as unfathomable, as the one leading us forward by generational steps. The equipment comes standard and maybe we don’t kick the tires enough before we ride off. Children are a gift, a burden and a curious result coming out of a clash between sensibilities. More curious is the pleasure parents take in knowing that these open books, these blank slates, will have no more success in closing the gender gap than we did. There is a bitter joy for both sides of the aisle in passing on the unlearnable lesson. That much we can agree on.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

In the Spirit of Friendship

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 01:08:00 +0000

The Fiction Corner: Where I will periodically publish rantings of an untrue nature.

In the Spirit of Friendship

     The marbles rolling across the bare oak floor made the sound of little bowling balls in search of their pins. It wasn’t much of a joke as far as Jerry was concerned, but the laughter rising from a portion of the crowd meant something, so he congratulated himself despite his misgivings. Always happy to oblige, even if it wasn’t my idea.
     When the first victim went vertical, thrown skyward by a careless misstep onto a rock-hard ball, Jerry noted with pleasure that it was his nemesis, James Friedlin, a contributing reviewer for the Times, among others. With most young writers, there exists an eternal feud with the guardians of the old-line literary establishment. Reviewers, editors, publishers and wags; there were marbles enough for all on this particular evening. Jerry’s running buddy and fellow hipster, Sam Easton, moved in alongside him beneath the double-pocket doorjamb, surveying the havoc.
     “You might think me deranged, but this is the most fun I ever had at a book party.”
     Before Jerry could agree, the stumbling figure of their mutual agent, Irv Konigsberg, paved his way into their space, his normal sweaty air expanded out to a salty river by the stress of the moment, flushing down past his gray comb-over and dotting his beige jacket’s shoulders.
     “Gee, Irv, it looks like April showers are back. Would you like an umbrella?”
     “Stuff it, Sam. Jerry, are you nuts? Your first opening and you turn it into the Three Stooges? What the hell is wrong with you?”
     Jerry didn’t respond to his agent, looking over and past him into the expansive parlor of his publisher, old what’s-his-name. Beyond the obligatory walls of stuffed bookcases, the furnishings were minimal, perhaps for the occasion. Rugs of an oriental variety, probably heirlooms bequeathed by an equally wealthy aunt, patched the wood floor in random arrangement. Wood folding chairs filled the spaces between taut leather settees. Small wooden stands of various height and size held vases of various color and mass, each vase a receptacle for a specific variety of cut flowers. It reminded Jerry of a funeral parlor, the sweet floral smell blending with the decaying paper remains of dead poets and authors, and the survivors gathered together to breathe all of it in.
      Jerry overheard Sam addressing Irv.
     “This is nothing. Last Mother’s Day, he sent his mom a male stripper dressed like an FTD delivery guy. When the music ended, all he had on was a helmet, sandals and the wings on his ankles. She hasn’t spoken to Jerry since.”
     The agent rattled his head, spraying the two writers with sweat. He pressed a wet finger against Jerry’s chest.
     “I have to fix this, Jerry. Don’t move. I’ll make things right.”
     With that, their agent waddled back into the fray, carefully stepping around the still rolling marbles. Jerry turned to Sam, frowning.
     “Thanks for telling him this was all your idea, dickhead.”
     “I’m sorry. It never came up.”
     “And that stripper was your idea, too.”
     “Yeah, well, what can I say? I’m full of ideas. That doesn’t mean you have to act on them all the time.” Sam finished shrugging off any responsibility with a smiling puss that forced his beleaguered friend to smile back.
     “You’re right. I should know better by now.”
     They both stopped smiling as Irv negotiated toward them through No-Man’s-Land with old what’s-his-name in tow. Sam tilted his head towards Jerry’s ear and spoke out of the side of his mouth.
     “Did you ever notice that Irv looks like a potato in a polka-dot bowtie?”
     “Not now, Sam. Don’t make me laugh.”
     Initially facing off two-by-two, the numbers fell uneven as Sam retreated two steps into the foyer. The publisher, the tallest of the remaining three, glared down at Jerry, while Irv, the shortest, rolled his eyes upward. The agent tried to speak first, quickly cut off by the patrician host.
     “Mister Spiegel, this is a disgraceful exhibition. I cannot fathom what could be going on in your mind.”
     Before Jerry could begin to formulate a response, a loud crash in the parlor drew everyone’s attention. Another of the old guard, this one the chief editor for what’s-his-name, lay motionless on the floor, beside shards of a broken ceramic vase and the severed remains of a splintered stand, and strewn with newly orphaned daisies. Irv waddled over quickly and helped the old man to his feet while picking flower petals off his chest.
     The publisher turned back to Jerry, his glare ever more menacing. The young writer opened with a peace offering.
     “I’ll … I’ll gladly pay for any damage … or replace everything. Whatever you say.”
     The publisher remained stern in character and leaned forward into Jerry’s face.
     “The vase was junk, a knock-off. However, that stand was an antique, Japanese maple, irreplaceable and priceless.”
     “So, I guess I can’t replace it.”
     “No, you can’t, Mister Spiegel. What you can, and will, do is get in there and clean up your mess and find every marble in that room. When you’re done, you can apologize to the guests and try to make amends with those injured by your prank.”
     The publisher stood erect and walked past both Jerry and Sam, in a direction away from the party. Sam and Irv converged simultaneously at Jerry’s spot, the entirety of the agent’s jacket soaked through with perspiration. Sam touched Irv lightly and made a sickened sound.
     “Eww, Irv. Go to the bathroom and towel yourself off before you catch pneumonia.”
     “Never mind that. What’s the verdict, Jerry?”
     Jerry shook his head.
     “No verdicts yet, just penance. I have to clean up and suck up.”
    “Sam and I will help, right Sam?”
     Sam smiled at a thought he was having and wrapped his arm around Jerry’s shoulder.
     “Of course. What are friends for?”

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

A Parent and Child at the Movies

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:11:00 +0000

I’m drinking my morning green tea out of a The Wedding Singer mug. It was a gift from my daughter Sofia, to add to my collection, from when she caught the musical on Broadway. I usually don’t drink out of my collection, but The Wedding Singer … seriously? Have I failed so horribly as a parent?

It is with some embarrassment that I admit that The Wedding Singer is my daughter’s favorite movie. I tried to be a good influence … okay, maybe good isn’t the word I’m looking for, but I tried to influence her judgment in some ways. As any parent knows, such influence goes just so far. Then she brings home the wavy-haired Jewish kid, forcing me to surrender to whatever fate brought him to us. Mazal tov, Adam Sandler.

An off-site parent for much of my daughter’s life, the weekends presented moments of opportunity for us to get to know one another and share our interests (as much as a parent can with their kid). Movies are a great generational leveler, especially if the parent prefers offbeat subject matter. I fall squarely into that category and freely confess to taking my daughter to see Beavis and Butthead Do America when she was four years old. Hey, it was a cartoon. Anyway, she’s been a B & B fan ever since, without falling into a slacker mentality.

When she was twelve, I took Sofia to see Team America: World Police. Hey, they were puppets. Anyway, she covered her eyes during the marionette sexual gymnastics, but thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the movie. She enjoyed it so much that she gave a rave review of it to my ex-wife. After acting on Sofia’s recommendation, her mother read me her version of the riot act. Again, they were friggin’ puppets!

At age fourteen, my ex took Sofia to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and Sofia suggested I take her to see it again soon after. Good choice, kid. I laughed continually, even as I (if you can imagine) was appalled at certain portions. In that respect, the child had taught the parent that cultural learnings are not so one-sided in an evolving relationship.

Now that my daughter is preparing to head off to SUNY Plattsburg, after a commendable high school stint (First Violin in the High School Orchestra and Chamber and recipient of a scholarship for her volunteer work at a local hospital), I can sit here, busting my buttons with pride at not totally screwing things up. So what if I have to endure a little Adam Sandler? It seems a small price to pay for the privilege of pointing her out to people and saying, “that’s my daughter and she survived, even thrived, in spite of her lunatic dad.”

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

When Hollywood Hype is the Entrée, What’s Left?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 03:37:00 +0000

When James Cameron’s Avatar finally poured out of movie screens, there were just as many negative comments regarding character and plot development in the film as there were positive remarks regarding the visual experience. Part of the disappointment for cinema traditionalists, who see narrative filmmaking as an extension of literature, was due to their own expectations, rather than any failure of the director to deliver on his vision. This is what Cameron does – big sandwiches, lots of lettuce and cheese, and very little meat. Titanic was a similar dish and shame on any of you for expressing the idea that Avatar could have been something grander … shame on you for buying into the pre-release hype.

Hollywood is Hype Central; publicists throwing dozens of snowballs down the mountain, in the hope that a few will gather the mass and momentum necessary to make some film the next “must see” box office smash. Trailers hit the movie screens months before editing on the actual film is complete, planting a seed of desire in moviegoers to see more.

In truth, there are dozens of trailers that affected me so positively that I said to myself, “I’ve got to see that one.” Yet, to my recollection, there are few that I can remember actually following through on. By the time of release, after the storms of publicity mentions and star interviews leading up to the premiere, I’m burnt on the thing and sick of hearing about it. It’s one thing to enjoy an original pitch and another to sacrifice my money and time to honor a vow made long ago to an overly ambitious, self-promoting charlatan.

A case in point is the approaching Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz adventure comedy Knight & Day. When I first heard about it, it was called Wichita. Cruise and Diaz appeared together in a video spot on The Jay Leno Show, pictures from the location set in Austria were showing up online and the word-of-mouth was loud. Then the trailer arrived. It was a nice trailer, allowing me to see Cameron Diaz (whom I love though currently, according to sources, she’s busy picking A-Rod’s cooties from her various body parts) in some physically demanding snippets. The websites dedicated to movies, numbering in the hundreds, each took their shot at flogging the beast, without a clue as to the merits of the movie. This is classic movie hype at work.

The New York Times published a piece centered on the evolution of Knight & Day last week. Apparently, the project was over a decade in development and the point of the Times story was that this is an unlikely drawn-out gestation by Hollywood standards. What I found telling were three bits of detail presented as casual asides, since it was the process, rather than the film itself, dominating the article’s focus:

Director James Mangold is still editing the film. At this point, you’d think that the type of editing handled by the director (scene ordering and inter-scene cuts) would be done, leaving the polish work of timing and continuity for the person with the three initials after his or her name. Major editing, at this late stage, is a warning sign that there is a problem with story flow.
Both Cruise and Diaz were giving major input during filming. This is never a good sign, no matter how valid the opinion of actors might be. Perhaps it’s the reason Mangold is still fussing with it; to undo the damage caused by appeasing his stars during filming.
Mangold, Cruise and Fox executives were all unwilling to give interviews to the Times reporter regarding the film. Ms. Diaz wasn’t approached (understandable in light of the cootie problem). With an impending June release date, the hype suddenly stops – this portends a looming critical disaster (or a delayed release, even at this late date) for what was originally billed as a fun/action movie.

The kind of hype that we’re seeing presently goes beyond that of the sequel to an established hit (think Iron Man 2), or an adaptation of a popular book or play (think Wicked). Certainly, the hype leading up to the release of Gone With the Wind must have been numbing. However, had the finished product been less than stellar then the big lead up to the premiere might have seemed ridiculous in retrospect. The new hype, fueled by film websites and stoked by bloggers and tweeters, threatens to escalate expectations for B-level movies to the point where they collapse upon arrival from the shear weight of their undelivered promises.

When the publicity machines run so hot they consume the things they intended to promote, we find ourselves surrounded by ashes. All we wanted was to see a screaming Cameron Diaz straddling Tom Cruise on a motorcycle. We may not be poorer for the loss, but I hate to think that such circumstances leave only A-Rod getting the straddles and the screams.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Humanism and the Midwest Syndicate – Two Films/One Review

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 01:16:00 +0000

Anyone growing up in an ethnic urban neighborhood had some, if only fleeting, contact with that thing called “our thing.” We non-members understood the deal without being party to it and kept a respectful distance whenever possible, wary of the unpredictable life cycles of mobsters and their associates. For all that supposed fear and loathing, we love movies about those people, from the original Scarface and Dial M for Murder, to The Godfather, Mean Streets, Goodfellas and The Departed.

Gangster movies follow the same formula of poverty, opportunity and tragedy whenever possible, allowing for application of the Judeo-Christian principle of righteous judgment at the climax. Which brings up two films; one from the recent past called Osso Bucco and another from a bit further back called Things Change, both set primarily in Chicago and both reflecting a wry comedic worldview of alternative possibilities in respect to the “thing,” especially in comparison to what we in New York (or Boston, or Philly) expect.

The two movies are totally different in terms of storyline. In Things Change, we have an elderly shoe repairman, played by Don Ameche, recruited by Chicago gangsters to take the fall for an associate with whom he bears a striking resemblance. In Osso Bucco, both the police and his own associates target a mild-mannered and incompetent Chicago gangster, played by Mike Starr. The similarity between the two films rests with character portrayal and the sympathy generated for each victim, as well as for an individual with whom some personal attachment grows.

In the case of Ameche’s character Gino, the attachment develops with Joe Mantegna’s character Jerry, a disgraced wiseguy (yet another similarity) charged with keeping Gino under wraps for the weekend and delivering him to court to surrender on the following Monday. Jerry treats Gino to a whirlwind visit of Lake Tahoe, where a case of misconstrued identity leads them both into the center of a national meeting of mob bosses. The buddy/buddy development progresses slowly and fully expresses itself only near the end.

On the other hand, Osso Bucco is a story about love: love of veal, love unspoken, love demeaned and love revealed. On the way to the airport for a supposed meeting in Italy, Starr’s character Jelly wants one more taste of his favorite dish at his regular spot, and one more glimpse of the waitress Megan (played by Illeana Douglas), for whom he secretly pines. The situation develops as a snowstorm traps Jelly and his gangster cousin inside the restaurant with the two police detectives who have been waiting with a RICO warrant for his arrest.

I’m not going to spoil either movie ending, except to say that neither climax includes the classic bullet to the back of the head. In this respect, both films succeed in rewarding viewer sympathy, at the expense of trying our collective guile. There exist gaps in logic at the beginning of both films. Specifically, why does the mob boss in Things Change, with his primary goal already achieved, hand Gino that antique coin? If the point is to demonstrate the ultimate valueless nature of such friendships, then the movie’s ending turns on itself. If the point is to describe the danger in casually offering such friendship, acceptance of that drives us in conflicting thematic directions at the end.

The main questions presented at the start of Osso Bucco and never fully answered: Why the boss, Jelly’s Uncle Sal, wants to whack him and why he needs to send him to Italy in order to do it? Obviously, the impending trip is what sets up the restaurant visit and the happy conclusion, but it defies our sense of gangster propriety to make an in-house killing so damned complicated. I’m not saying those boys lack imagination. I am saying that they don’t want to incur any additional costs beyond two bullets and a throwaway gat.

Given my personal background, I find it interesting that I enjoyed both movies as much as I did. Don Ameche and Joe Mantegna were both believable in their interactions, with Ameche less so in his scenes apart from Mantegna. The failure of Things Change to connect fully lies with the bland characterization of those men at the upper reaches of the crime syndicate, especially in light of the ceremonious coin presentation early on.

For Osso Bucco, I could fault the nearly total absence of Italian names in the cast, but must acknowledge that generations of melting pot stirring makes surnames poor indicators of genetic makeup. I certainly can’t say Mike Starr doesn’t look Italian. The main flaw in this movie is the lack of a plausible reason to kill off a family member. It isn’t a thing done lightly; you kill a guy for a purpose, even if that purpose is for mere convenience. The Jelly character appeared to be handling money matters for the gang and didn’t seem to be skimming any of the take. If we want plausible, we could buy the fact that law enforcement was looming and Jelly the type to talk, but we can only assume such a just cause, due to the failure of the narrative to elaborate.

Comedy is hard. Effective comedy with a sensitive underbelly is harder still. Throw in a bunch of pug-nosed gangsters and make their imperative your plotline and you’re just asking for a long black carload of complications that can drag a story down. It’s seems interesting that two movies made twenty years apart both make the same mistake of underestimating their villains and muddying their intent. Maybe it’s a Chicago thing, this mélange of cross-purpose that results in unscathed mobsters and deep-dish pizza. I personally could go for either on occasion, but I appear to be in the minority.

I came to praise these two films for what they tried to achieve, not bury them for their shortcomings. I recommend viewing both as examples of the continuing expression of hope, even as one arrives at the brink, and for the irony they provide simply from existing. The failure of Things Change to find a wide audience upon release (Columbia Pictures-1988-opening weekend $600,000) and the utter financial pit investors found in Osso Bucco (RiverWest Films-2008-not distributed) tells us that in gangster movies, the bullet to the back of the head is inevitable; if not for the movie characters, then certainly for the movie.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The Secret of My Insanity

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:43:00 +0000

You’re all going crazy, every last one; Tea Party mad hatters, Obama bumper sticker slappers, dog lovers, cat killers, pedophiles, oenophiles, Maoists, Zionists and ski bums. Each one of you is a developing whack job at some level of your Big Store brain, the only difference being at which particular floor you get off. Third floor – Ladies Delicates, Leather Eyewear and Bedroom Swings … excuse me, this is my stop.

Madness is no different from any other evolving condition. Long stretches of boringly infinitesimal mutations, interspersed with cataclysmic events that permanently alter the psychological landscape, continually stretch the mind into an oblong aspect. This ongoing process is a side effect of learning. The brain feeds constantly on life’s chum and sometimes doesn’t chew it thoroughly. There are big indigestible chunks of information banging around inside your skull, usually revealing themselves on picket signs and stupid t-shirts. There is no method to any of it, beyond the evidence that we get crazier every day.

I recognized the advantage to being an acknowledged screwball at an early age, trapped among elderly family members whose mental editors took the train to Miami Beach and left their wrinkled bodies and brains behind in New York. Those people sat at the table, blurting and grousing like imbeciles and entertaining the crap out of themselves. I liked that. I decided that one didn’t need liver spots to enjoy such freedom and went straight to babbling old coot at the unripe age of twelve. Now, that’s crazy.

Friends and family see me as a gooney bird, unpredictable and prone to flying upside down. It’s liberating, leaving me incapable of offending anyone, since no one pays much attention anymore. I can say almost anything, covered over with a dopey look, and get away with it, just like your grandfather. I confess to picking my spots, so I may not be totally insane. It’s a work in progress, as I’m currently working on holding one nostril closed while blowing boogers out the other.

There is a perceptive correlation between the appearance of people and the degree of kookiness we’re willing to permit them. Bag ladies get a total pass. There isn’t anything they do that goes beyond any boundary of expectation. On the flip side, a well-groomed middle-aged man in a Brooks Brothers suit doesn’t get the leeway to drop those expensive pants in broad daylight and defecate on a street curb. Nor should he, given that he purposely projects an image that says he has yet to pay his crazy dues in full.

Being obviously insane is a full-time occupation that requires the constant reinforcement of visually erratic behavior. A uniform helps. I used to play for a semi-pro baseball team called the Sewanhaka Indians and our game uniforms matched those of Cleveland’s team. Sometimes I’d wear the top out in public in Manhattan and invariably be stopped by passersby, usually Yankees fans.

“Hey, Indian, welcome to New York.”

“I’m from here, genius.”

“So, why are you an Indians fan?”

“I’m not. I’m a Mets fan.”

“What?”

“Let’s go Mets!”

“What?”

That’s the cue, the verbal double “What?” accompanied by the “What?” facial expression, telling me I’ve immediately established myself to this complete stranger as being a little off. From his point of view, with the expectations concerning me permanently altered, a public poop seems a little less outrageous – Not that I would do it, but it’s nice to have options. Acknowledging your own insanity means never having to ask, “Where’s the bathroom?”

Speaking of Indians, there was a legend among pioneer folk that Native American warriors wouldn’t scalp a visibly insane person, considering it “bad medicine.” I don’t know if it’s true, but I have this grand scheme forming in my head to test the extent that people share a similar aversion. Picture me in a fancy restaurant, sitting at a table with my party. I notice a person at a nearby table pushing their plate away, indicating that they’re finished eating. I go over, stand beside the person, grab the plate and start eating what’s left. How do you think that would go over? I’m curious, but maybe I should try it out in a restaurant at Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun, just to be safe.

Yes, I’m crazy and you’re all slowly moving in my direction. I’ve been living in my own funhouse for so long it feels like a spring day at Disney. It’s always nice to be ahead of the curve and incredibly convenient, too. While your kids are shipping you off because they notice the inevitable change, I’ll remain in my own permanent state of goofball grace. Nothing I say or do will strike anyone who knows me as anything other than typically me. As for you people who don’t know me, I’ll try to be as obvious as possible without using your personal space as a toilet.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Crosby, Stills and Nash … Not So Young

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:46:00 +0000

Tonight’s the night. No, this is not about that working man, Bruce Berry, to whom Neil Young said “Hello on Miami Beach.” It’s my deadline to use fifteen MP3 credits on my Napster account, which don’t roll over month to month. Tomorrow, I get fifteen new credits and can dawdle over those for the next thirty days.

During my download jag, I went in search of “Carry On,” the opening song on an album I remembered from my youth. You know the one, with the vintage sepia photo on the album cover and David Crosby’s “Almost Cut My Hair,” Neil Young’s “Country Girl Suite,” as well as a version of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” among the tracks. To my flawed memory, that album was performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I ran an artist search of the Napster library and all I could find was the dirty live version from “Four-Way Street.” No dice on the studio cut.

On a hunch, I searched under Crosby, Stills and Nash and found what I was looking for in one of several anthology albums the label (I think it was Atlantic Records back then) repackaged to boost their bottom line. Well, that was that, but it got me thinking about the original album, and why it didn’t show in the search. Thinking further along, I started wondering about the collaboration between those particular musicians.

I’m not a musician, nor am I any kind of Rock historian, so you can take this all with a grain of salt and correct any mistakes in the comments section. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, I’ll say that Crosby, Stills and Nash were all about melody and harmony, two things that Neil Young seemed averse to in his massive solo compendium.

Don’t get me wrong; I am a big fan of Neil’s. He lost me for a spell on the release of “Comes a Time”, but got me back with “Rust Never Sleeps.” I just like it better when he fronts Crazy Horse. I bought “Harvest” when it came out, but looking at the album now, the only cut I really enjoy is “Words (Between the Lines of Age).” Don’t comment on that. I don’t want to hear about “Needle and the Damage Done.” Captain Hook could make a twelve-string guitar sound as good. The point is Neil Young is Neil Young when he’s rocking those three chords and burning out guitar pickups … very unlike CS&N.

Comparing the trio with Neil Young is like comparing a river with a beaver dam. His method of constructing a musical piece is structural and obstructive, while the other three flowed in separate, complementary layers. The connection between Stills and Young, from their early days together as members of Buffalo Springfield, is probably what spurred the idea of Neil joining them, but it didn’t last.

Later on, Stills and Young got together one more time, as The Stills-Young Band, but that didn’t last either. One album … a couple of memorable cuts (“Long May You Run” and “Fontainebleau” were my favorites) and then they went back to Manassas and Crazy Horse respectively. After that, CS&N would get together between David Crosby’s hitches in prison and the whole Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young episode turned into a musical cave painting, with only that awful live album to stand as proof that it even happened.

I’m listening to Neil close out “Like a Hurricane” right now and I can’t think of anything as opposite as “Marrakesh Express” or “Wooden Ships.” There was that one album, and many instances of other musical masters from different disciplines combining in memorable performances, but sometimes the collaborative instinct in musicians finds the music to be an undermining influence.

Abstract Invention by Charlie Accetta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

In Search of the Best Diet Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:23:00 +0000

I don’t eat enough bacon. The thought floats around my head as I move a pound of it from my freezer to the cold cut drawer in the fridge section. I touch my belly, the one whose girth threatens the health of the person attached to it. I need to lose weight for my own well-being, if not for the well-being of my health insurer. After all, it seems that the primary purpose for being in shape, according to everything I read, is that it helps to keep our nation’s healthcare costs down. Hey, I’m up with that, but then somebody over at Blue Cross should invest some effort in making a tasty form of lo-cal pig. Try to be part of the solution, folks, instead of just nagging at us and showing pictures of fat dead people.

Losing weight is our national pastime; we’re just not very good at it. Sure, we’ll lose a few pounds when we’re paying attention to the things we put in our mouths, but most of us don’t have enough incentive to stick with it. I know I don’t. I tried Atkins ten years ago and lost thirty pounds, but that didn’t last. All it took was some white chocolate bark imbedded with pistachio nuts and I was finished. Now, I’m on a green tea kick, but I still drink coffee, too, which defeats the purpose even though I use saccharine and a non-dairy creamer. And that’s the whole movie in a single reel; I do the right thing and follow it up with the wrong thing. For me obesity isn’t a disease, but rather a symptom.

I think about people who stay thin their entire lives and wonder how they achieve such a metabolic nirvana. I want to be like that, without pharmaceutical assistance. I thought I had the perfect idea once. It started out with the revelation that sick people lose weight. Obviously, I didn’t want to consider anything life threatening or overly disruptive or non-reversible. So, a whirlwind tour of nuclear power plants was out, along with anything that required the services of an oncologist. I needed something acutely effective, yet short term. It dawned on me that one disease fit perfectly – dysentery. I couldn’t think of a quicker or easier way to lose weight than to shit it out. All I needed was a fouled water source.

I was surprised at the difficulty in contracting dysentery in the United States. There’s chlorine everywhere. Plus, having eaten regularly in places where the kitchens were filthy disgusting and the food carelessly handled, my body developed incredible resistance to a germ onslaught. Short of flying to India for a weeklong dose of Ganges lemonade, the dysentery angle was dead. More thinking followed and soon brought me to a uniquely American affliction: lactose intolerance.

As with most Boomers, I drank a lot of milk and ate a lot of ice cream as a kid. The flipside to all that dairy consumption comes later, after we discover Jack Daniels and Slim Jims. Our bodies stop producing the lactase enzyme and lose the ability to break down lactose, resulting in a monumental case of the squirts whenever we indulge in dairy products. Bingo. It’s not as glamorous-sounding as dysentery, but amounts to almost the same thing, albeit requiring some caloric input to muster the intended output.

I’m happy to report that it worked, to a degree. I did lose some weight, but when I wrote the requirements above, I included the phrase “overly disruptive” among the things we didn’t want. There are few things more improvisational than a spastic bowel. If you choose this course, do it on a weekend and rent a room. Better to befoul someone else’s plumbing and wallpaper than your own. Pack extra underwear, too … lots of it.

In the end (the figurative one, not the wet and smelly évacuateur), I reached an unintended result. By reintroducing large doses of milk products into my diet, I apparently cured the intolerance problem. God does indeed have a wicked sense of humor. And I, dear friends, am out of bright ideas. Apparently, the diet wags who prescribe reduced caloric intake and high fiber and regular exercise and yadda-yadda and blah-blah-blah are annoyingly correct. I must set my mind on the right track and follow through with the disciplined fervor of a Marine or a Moonie. And yet, somehow still, a thought breaches the mind’s rampart.

I wonder if that bacon is thawed yet.

Sentenced to a Year of Report Cards

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:55:00 +0000

I'm taking a creative writing course at Suffolk Community College and this is my first assignment: Write about an event from your life, age 7 or younger. First, write about it in the first-person present, as if you are the child. Then, write of the same event as an adult in the first-person past. As usual, I bent the rules a little by using the adult segment more as an epilogue, rather than a redundant retelling.

Part One – I Am Indicted

Oh, boy, I’m really in trouble now. I didn’t think anything would be as hard as second grade. Our assistant principal, Mrs. Como, came into the classroom this morning and my teacher, Mrs. Herman, called me up to the front of the room. I was standing there while Mrs. Como pointed a piece of paper at me and told my classmates that this is what happens to students who don’t know how to behave.

I’m always being sent to Mrs. Como’s office. Mrs. Herman hates me and every time I make a peep, she points her finger to the door. I don’t even ask where or why anymore, I just go. Sometimes, Mrs. Como talks to me about my behavior, and sometimes she calls my Mom on the phone while I’m sitting in her office. When she talks, it’s boring. But when she calls Mom, I know I’m gonna get a beating when I get home. I’d rather be bored.

This was different. Mrs. Como was telling everybody about the piece of paper.

“Starting today, Charles will be bringing a report card home for his parents to sign every day. Mrs. Herman shall note all instances of his misbehavior. If he bothers any of you, tell your teacher and she will write it on the card.”

I’m dead. This means a beating a day, starting today. I didn’t do anything bad today, so the space on the card is blank, but just telling Mom about the report card means an hour of screaming and cursing and maybe some smacks with the wooden spoon. I didn’t say anything about it when I went home for lunch. Now, school is out and I’m walking down the block towards home. I’m not close enough to see my apartment building and I start to pray that it caught fire and killed everybody inside. I get closer and see everything is okay. That means everything is okay for everyone except me. I’m dead.

I ring for Mom to buzz me in. I usually take the steps two or three at a time. This time, I walk up the stairs real slow to the fourth floor. The apartment door is unlocked. Good. Maybe I can sneak past her to my room. I close the big door, nice and easy so Mom can’t hear me coming in. I tiptoe into the foyer and then I stop at the sound of her voice coming from my parents’ bedroom.

“Charles!”

How does she do that? I walk into the bedroom and Mom is sitting at the sewing machine, doing her piecework. That’s her job, sewing these white strips together all day. She won’t tell me what it’s for; she just calls it her “homework.” Grandma told me they were bra-straps, but not to let anyone know I knew that. Grandma trusts me and I act dumb, for both our sakes. Mom looks up from her sewing.

“Did anything happen at school today?”

I take a deep breath and hand her the report card, looking down at the floor. I try to answer, but the words get stuck in my mouth.

“Stop mumbling.”

“You have to sign it.”

I‘m afraid to look at her. I wait for a question or a scolding, or a slap across my cheek. I start to cry, but try to hide it. I hear Mom sigh and tell me to bring her a pen from the kitchen counter. I run off to get it, just happy to be safe for a little bit. I walk back in and hold out the pen, reaching so maybe I can avoid the first swing. Mom grabs the pen from my hand, signs the card and hands both back to me.

“Put the pen back where you found it and put the report card with your books. Then come back here.”

I do what she says and I’m standing in front of her again. I’m waiting for my punishment, tensed up for the screaming and the beating, but Mom stays calm.

“Mrs. Como called me after lunch. She said she likes you very much. I don’t know why. She says you’re disruptive in class and your teacher is close to a nervous breakdown. Mrs. Herman wants you transferred, but Mrs. Como wants to see if this daily report card will help straighten you out.”

Mom is starting to cry while she’s talking.

“You’d better not get into any more trouble in school, Mister. I swear, you’re making everyone miserable and I’m sick of it. Behave yourself. I’m tired of hearing that you lack self-control. I’ll beat the crazy out of you if I have to, understand?”

“Yes, Mom.” I want to say it isn’t fair, but I’m glad to get away without a beating this one time. I know I can’t be good in school, but now I have to be extra careful. This Second Grade life is hard for a kid. It’s all so strange, but I’m not allowed to say why I think it is, because nobody else understands. It isn’t fair, not one bit.

Part Two – I Am Judged

It is a fact, a well-worn shoe walking through our family’s inner circle, that I was an abused child. My younger brothers and I laugh over the memory of that age of lunacy whenever the family is gathered around a holiday table, goading Mom into admitting she’d be under arrest for her past sins in these sensibly modern times. Dad remains silent when the subject arises, as he did when the bruises were fresh. Much the same as other invited guests from the periphery of those good old days, he didn’t witness the crimes. He worked two jobs, sometimes three, to keep us warm and fed, and to keep Mom stocked with wooden spoons.

Perspective is important when attempting to pass judgment; the difficulty in achieving a truly fair point of view is probably why it isn’t a good idea to judge anyone in the first place. Nevertheless, I started out telling this story, so I may as well finish it. My adventures in school and the daily behavioral report that I was compelled to present to my parents were byproducts of my own conscious choices. I constantly questioned established rules and tested permissible limits, and did so in a manner unacceptable for that time, or any other. I ridiculed the basic tenets that my parents and teachers held dear and held myself hostage to ideas they could not fathom. This is not a design for happy childhoods in otherwise comfortable circumstances.

The daily report card affair lasted less than two months. In the interim, I misspoke on occasion, prompting the vague entry for the record, but not presenting any concrete argument in favor of Mrs. Herman’s bad seed theory. Also during that period, our class took a series of standardized tests, where students penciled in the answers to multiple-choice questions. School officials disclosed the results to my parents a few years later, and the timing couldn’t have been worse for Mrs. Herman. This poor scholastic performer, this unbridled scamp, mindlessly frolicking within a classroom designed for accelerated students (and often setting it on its end), earned the highest test scores in the district.

Mrs. Herman took a sabbatical in the middle of the school year and the daily report card followed close behind her into mere remembrance. I’m not sure if she left at administration request or felt cowed by her failure to assess my potential or if I, as my mother put it, finally drove the poor woman to the loony bin. All I know is that every teacher of mine in the years following, until we moved out of the Bronx, knew me by reputation before the school year began, keeping careful watch and a tight rein over me throughout the school day.

Looking back now, I can appreciate those educators having jobs to perform while trying to work around the instability that I represented. For them, I embodied an impossible challenge and each, in their own way, placed me in the category of unwanted annoyance. For me, their ignorant fear of my unknowns fed an element that bloomed into a character full of impish, sardonic glee. As an adult, I revel in my particular personal niche and in the fact that no amount of mental or physical torture can dissuade me from being the smiling pain in the ass that life trained me to be.

When Film Stars Attack – Who Needs Critics?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:51:00 +0000

It’s bad enough when on-line and print press gather eight-deep to pan a movie that most of us would have terminated at conception with a morning-after pill, but when actors from said films chime in with their own snipes, what are we to think? My first thought is, I’m glad you recognize the flaws, at least those that don’t directly point to your own culpability. My second thought is, dummy, did you read a treatment or script before signing on? My third thought is, remind me not to hire this bum for future work.

What other industry allows those in its employ to talk smack about the product? Well, maybe television, but that’s an extension of the problem described here. For recent history, we need only refer to the following – both Michael Keaton and George Clooney regretting their respective turns as Batman, Jackie Chan grousing in reference to the Rush Hour series, and Halle Berry (on the podium accepting an Academy Award, no less) dissing the Cat Woman gig that preceded her Best Actress role in Monster’s Ball. In each case, we have a headline player expressing buyer’s remorse over the voluntary and knowing acceptance of the circumstances for which they were cashing a particular paycheck. That sort of indignation belongs exclusively to us – the ticket-buying public. We’re not issuing a pass just because a starring actor agrees, after the fact, with consensus opinion.

Even more recently, Katherine Heigl spouted off to Vanity Fair about her role in the movie Knocked Up, not bashing the movie as much as the apparent disposition of her character. She complained of its “sexist portrayal” of women. Seriously …? In a movie entitled Knocked Up? Shocking, just shocking. Even allowing some slack for intent, in that her anticipated interview audience was primarily female, she comes off sounding exactly like the kind of person she portrayed: a shrew (her word, not mine). No wonder I found her so convincing in the role. The verdict is in, Katherine. We find you spoiled and ungrateful and sentence you to a lifetime of acting opportunities with tasteful nude scenes essential to the storyline.

With all that good stuff, we now have some Goode stuff – Matthew Goode, the male lead in the latest Amy Adams vehicle, Leap Year, telling the Daily Telegraph that the movie was “turgid” and “the worst film of 2010.” Firstly, Matthew, it’s a little early in the year to be accepting such an honor. The 99.9 percent of the viewing public who didn’t want to see it in a theater under any circumstance remain unaffected by your critique. Secondly, couldn’t you wait for the DVD release before unloading your personal torment on the world? Granted, most of the people pushing the buttons on those Big Red Boxes probably don’t know that turgid means pretentious; they probably think it means something nasty on the bottom of their shoes. And they certainly don’t need Webster’s to tell them what worst film of 2010 means.

This attitude flies in the face of our definition of commitment. Look that one up in the dictionary, Matthew. You, along with your whiny compatriots, need to understand that one should always stand with the team publicly, no matter what everyone else is saying, even when the results stink … especially if they stink. There is nothing honorable in disparaging any production on the basis of narrowly formed opinion, and when the quoted source originates from inside, it’s downright treacherous. Thankfully, the karmic wind generally shifts in the direction of blowhards. A future mention by Katherine Heigl that she found your lovemaking scenes with her "turgid" just might make our world whole again.

The Tyrant Inside the Little Man

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:05:00 +0000

I was reading Mike Lupica’s column on the New York Daily News website, an expository warning regarding Alex Rodriguez’s connection to a Canadian doctor under investigation for smuggling Human Growth Hormone into the United States. Lupica attempts to convince readers, in a left-handed manner, that A-Rod is a conscious violator of Major League Baseball’s ban on such substances, and his failure to confess to federal investigators would have dire future consequences. Pity the poor Yankee fan reading it online and wishing to voice a direct objection, since Mike Lupica’s column is one of the few I know of that does not contain an area to add comments.

If this were only about the desire to cut off the flood of fan hysteria regularly directed at an opinionated sports writer, it would certainly not warrant mention. However, besides being an award-winning sports columnist and a celebrated author of youth fiction, Mr. Lupica has of late directed his attention to the area of local and national politics. The Daily News conceded him additional space toward the front of the paper from which to shoot, while continuing to deny online readers the freedom to fire back. This constitutes an unfair advantage in the standard rules of engagement as applies to new journalism and I’m willing to guarantee that this arrangement to mute all contrary opinion came at the writer’s request. It seems rather tyrannical, doesn’t it? I’m confident that Oscar Madison wouldn’t stoop so low.

So, I ask myself, what is the root cause behind this attempt to stonewall opposing views? Were some overzealous fans issuing death threats disguised as comments, or opportunists using the comment box to hawk cures for defective erections? Were fellow journalists foisting prank messages on a fourth-estate colleague as a form of electronic t-p-ing? All of the above, probably, but every writer faces some level of that when posting online. There has to be something else behind the confinement of all of Mike Lupica’s writing to a reply-proof bunker.

My theory is that he feels victimized from a lifetime of being short in stature. A man of intelligence and influence, to be sure, but those very traits, combined with the close proximity of his head to the floor, breed a rare form of psychosis found only in the neighborhood where dust bunnies romp and the creak of floorboards is most deafening. He’s disappointed that the often promised “growth spurt” passed him by and took Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy with it, leaving him just tall enough to be ignored by circus promoters.

Any reference to a Napoleon Complex would be inaccurate, as the French Dictator rose to 5’6” in English Measure, virtually lurking over our cub reporter. In fact, most of history’s notable tyrants were of average height or greater: Henry VIII towered at over six feet, Adolph Hitler stood above average at 5’8-1/2” and Joseph Stalin a vertical equal of Bonaparte’s. No, if we use historical figures as a comparable yardstick for great infamy, then Mike Lupica falls short. Oops … sorry.

Thus, greatness through tyranny is denied through the smallness of the man. Not only in that he buys his suits off the boys rack and his shoes from Buster Brown, but more so because he is not big enough to accept the risk that the rest of us do in writing in a public forum; the risk of being shown up and slapped around. A true tyrant, a magnificent one, would welcome the challenge and the opportunity to slap back even harder. He proves to be only a minor journalistic despot, a Pinochet with a notepad, a Baby Doc with a Speak-and-Spell thesaurus. We must admit, however, that Buster Brown makes a sturdy shoe and Lupica’s suits do fit well. He’d make a very nice-looking sixth grader in the class picture, the kind that everyone gets punished for teasing.

It Won’t Stay Dead – Reviving the Dark Night of “Fever”

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:56:00 +0000

On the phone with my beloved Christine earlier this evening, she mentioned catching the end of Saturday Night Fever while channel surfing. We’ve dated for ten years now and I never realized until this day how much she liked that movie. Memo to myself – pay better attention to your woman, bonehead. Personally, I have a long-time, double distilled hatred for the soundtrack from that film. At the time of its release, I was working for a company that manufactured the cassette and eight-track recordings for RSO, the organization with which Australian-born British impresario Robert Stigwood both won and lost fortunes (he buried money accumulated from Saturday Night Fever and Grease into the graves of subsequent creative missteps, highlighted by the Sergeant Pepper movie fiasco).

For month after month, I delivered boxes of empty cassette shells and top and bottom eight-track casing halves to the cassette-feeders and eight-track tape splicers, all nice, hard-working, underpaid women. The result of their labors, after label application (eight-tracks) or ink screening and jewel box insertion (cassettes), individual shrink-wrapping and assembly into corrugated shipping containers, stood evident in the mountains of music, block-stacked on wooden pallets and pulled by strong-armed and weak-minded young men such as myself through a series of checkpoints in the direction of the loading dock.

Much of the work we did was on spec, running production orders and holding finished product in inventory, then awaiting distributor purchase orders to pull and ship the stock. With SNF, it was different. Whole splicing lines and cassette loading sections ran the title exclusively, with individual shrink-wrap and box-load lines dedicated to it and, as soon as the pallets of packed corrugated boxes reached ‘so high,’ out the door they went. Work continued at that pace for over six months, non-stop. The fact that this was the soundtrack for a film that appeared to be an homage to Disco made the effort seem ignoble to my early-twenties eyes. Disco was a plague to my senses, as it was to many of my generation. I hated acting as an agent for the enemy by helping to spread this foul propaganda. My guilt manifested itself in nightmares featuring mirror balls and platform shoes.

I didn’t mention any of this to Christine. I may have made a gagging sound, but I don’t think she picked it up coming through my wireless headset. I listened as she spoke lovingly about the Bee-Gees and whatever other musical mutts contributed to the film score. She then suggested adding Saturday Night Fever to my Netflix queue, so we could see it again from start to finish. We’ve developed a routine of a weekday movie night, using my Netflix account to supply the content. It’s been a hit or miss process so far, mainly due to my inability to gauge her tolerance for black humor; Burn After Reading received a thumbs-down after viewing and Bruno a foot-down (literally), barely making it through the first twenty minutes. With Saw 2 and Saw 3 on the horizon, I thought that perhaps a concession on my part was in order.

I don’t want to waste the precious movie night on a young John Travolta, even considering the fact that a good dose of Johnny might rev up my love’s already impressive sexual engine. I considered delivering the DVD and then retiring to her computer room while she watched it alone, but that wouldn’t be right; a recent article called “Getting Out of the Girly Stuff” on Match.com contains several quotes from me (identified as Charlie from Long Island) where I contend that some level of compromise is necessary in sustaining a relationship.

Thus hoisted by mine own petard, I am exposed and helpless to this thing that I once thought to be as dead as polio. My only satisfaction in bowing low and sitting still while the lights from flashing floor panels wash over my glazed eyes (besides the true joy of making my lady happy) rests with the certain knowledge that the expanded popularity (and subsequent backlash) inspired by this movie actually helped to diminish the cachet of Disco culture among influential trend-setters. Then came Grease and, hey hey, my my, Rock and Roll never did die. Bless you, Robert Stigwood.

Love and Hate in Nine Innings - Inning Five

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Accetta) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:29:00 +0000

Top of the Fifth – Tom Seaver and Cleon Jones

My mother’s Aunt Angie lived in the apartment above ours on Hobart Avenue in the Bronx. One night, when her grandson was visiting from Texas, we two boys sat in her living room and watched a Mets game. A rookie pitcher started for the Mets that evening, his name forgotten in the misty memory of cup-of-coffee prospects. Aunt Angie was passing through when the rookie’s name came up in the broadcast. It didn’t seem a very odd name but, upon hearing its mention, she stated that baseball players have such unusual names. Mind you, this remark came from someone named Angelina Prestopino nee Aloisi.

Still, in the annals of odd names, the Mets have had their share of weird spellings and sounds to list. I’ll skip the nicknames and stick with given and surnames (in no particular order): Al Luplow (an expert in the restraint of short people), Bobby Pfeil (yes, the “P” is as silent as his bat), Don Hahn (or, as he was known to Jamaican fans, Don Hahn, mon), Chris Cannizzaro (Aunt Angie would have approved), Jesse Gonder (what’s good for the gos …), Amos Otis (picture cookies on an elevator), Clem Labine (Jethro Bodine’s biological father), Carlton Willey (term given for an erection caused by smoking low-tar cigarettes), Frank Lary (as opposed to an evasive Lawrence), Danny Napoleon (as French as French Fries and minus a cream center), Bob Friend (but if your name is Fred, watch out), Cal Koonce (what do you call someone who flunks out of UCal?), Al Schmelz (no, this one is way too easy), Les Rohr (more cowbell), Joe Moock (who you calling a Moock?), Jack Aker (symptomatic of overdoing the masturbatory thing) and Jerry Cram (recipe: mix one woman with several Jerrys and wait for the scream). I could go on, but this is getting tedious.

If you’re still with me, my favorite unusual player name for the Mets is Cleon Jones. It just reeks of history, a prince of Troy dumped unceremoniously into the delta swamps of Mobile, Alabama. Cleon was an outfielder with an unusual combination of a right-handed bat and left-throwing arm. He also had a vertical scar moving skyward from his upper lip, which made him appear older than he was, and a little threatening. He spent twelve mostly-productive years as a Met, never exactly displaying the pop of a corner outfielder but amassing a career batting average over .280. In 1969, Cleon finished third in the National League batting race and ranked seventh in the vote for league MVP. One night during the regular season, while playing in an outfield flooded by an earlier torrential rain, he hesitated in pursuing a ball hit in his direction. After the play was over, manager Gil Hodges left the first-base dugout and took a long, slow walk out to Cleon in left field. They chatted briefly and then both men took the long, slow walk together back to the dugout. It seemed shocking at the time it happened, but Cleon insists that the conversation centered on the condition of the field and its potential to aggravate an existing injury. For the fans watching, as well as his teammates, it appeared that Hodges was making a general statement to the team regarding his impatience with any player who was “dogging it.” I believe Cleon. It must be the scar.

George Thomas Seaver enjoyed an equally long and even more successful career for the Mets. Voted National League Rookie of the Year in 1967, he went on to win three Cy Young awards as a Met. There’s nothing unusual about his name, other than the fact that he didn’t answer to “George.” Tom Seaver was fortified white bread, as Southern California as Cleon Jones was southern. Because he became the first legitimate Met Hall of Fame inductee, along with the tributes amassed in a great career, Seaver is looked upon as an icon and Mets fans would, even today, line up for miles to kiss his World Series ring. However, I always found him to be somewhat phony. Maybe it was the clash between his California realities versus those of my Bronx. In any case, I admired his skill as a pitcher … and I still do.

Bottom of the Fifth – Cleon Jones was undone as a Met during spring training in 1975, when St. Petersburg police discovered him in the back of his van, naked and in the company of a white woman. He was arrested for indecent exposure, forced by the then Chairman/GM M. Donald Grant to make an embarrassing public apology and subsequently released by the team in July of that year. I don’t know what Grant found more disturbing; the nudity, the white woman, or the fact that he slept in a van.

As for Tom Terrific, when manager Yogi Berra gave him the ball to start game six of the 1973 World Series, Seaver’s arm was in no condition to handle the short rest. My father always blamed Yogi for losing the last two games (and the series) to the Oakland As, but to my mind, Seaver had earned sufficient status by then to decline and defer to George Stone. We’ll never know what would have happened, but even if Stone failed, Seaver could take the ball for game seven in reasonable physical shape to compete. I remembered that on June 15, 1977 when the Midnight Massacre occurred, after Seaver held firm in his demand to M. Donald Grant for a contract that was commensurate with the then going rate for star pitchers or else, only to have Grant call his bluff and trade him to Cincinnati. Tom cried at the press conference that night. At that point, like Grant, I had had enough.

Next up – The Broadcast Team