Saturday it rained and I didn't do too much during the day (I read a bunch of Hellblazer comics I had bought at free comic book day, watched TV, etc.). Saturday night the weather cleared up and I went to the TV on the Radio show with Reed and Chris. The show was good in terms of the band playing well and the crowd getting into it and the weather turning out to be really good (it didn't rain on us, but the rain earlier in the day had cooled things off a lot). The only complaint that I had was with the Stubb's sound system. For much of the show we were standing toward the back third of the audience, and the sound from back there was really muddy and supersaturated with bass (to the exclusion of a lot of the other sounds). I walked around a bit to try to hear better, but the sound in the whole back half of the place was kind of screwed up, which makes for a kind of trying experience when you're listening to a band that's as layered as TVOTR. I went and stood over behind the soundboard guy for a while, and as expected, it sounded better over there (so everything sounded good to the sound guy, probably), but you couldn't see much from behind the sound booth. I noticed that the first time I had seen TVOTR at Stubb's they had used a second set of PA speakers which were mounted about halfway up the hill, which helped to keep the sound from getting so muddy. They didn't use those speakers on Saturday night, and the sound suffered. Anyway, the band was tight and played well, but the sound wasn't great, so that's frustrating. Stupid Stubb's. $30 to stand in a dirt lot at a rain or shine event, and they can't even provide a sound system that sounds good throughout their whole venue.
Sunday I went to see The Soloist, which was a movie with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jamie Foxx about a Juliard-trained cellist who becomes stricken with schizophrenia and ends up living on the streets of L.A.. It was a pretty good movie, with strong performances put in by both Downey and Foxx, but I had two main points that kept bugging me throughout the movie. One was the fact that the movie depicted lots of different homeless people living on the streets and suffering through a lot of bad stuff, but the movie's protagonist, writer Steve Lopez, sort of squarely sets his sights on trying to help Nathaniel Ayers because of his musical talents. The movie does go out of its way to show the plight of a number of mentally ill homeless people, but you can't help but feel some sort of implied message that maybe people with artistic talent are more worthy of being helped than other people (or something like that- I'm being a little too harsh, and apparently some of Lopez's writing did help to get some attention for the homeless/mentally ill population at large from city hall, but I just found it weird that Lopez primarily wants to help this one guy because of his musical talent. I'm not saying that he doesn't deserve to be helped, but it seems strange that musical ability should be the deciding factor). The other weird point about the movie was that I just couldn't get one of Downey's other movies out of my mind while watching this one. In Tropic Thunder Downey plays an actor who humorously (but sort of accurately) ridicules the movie industry by talking about how actors love to play people with mental retardation or mental illness because they think that such roles are an almost surefire way to qualify them for an Oscar. Going further, Downey's character even states that most of the actors are best served by roles portraying a mental illness, but by not going "full retard", which is thought to be going too far. And there's some truth to that. Moviemakers seem to enjoy portraying people with disabilities, but not unless there's some sort of extraordinary skill or talent which offsets that ability. Dustin Hoffman played an autistic person in Rainman, but the character was a savant with powerful mathematical computation abilities. Russell Crowe played a man with schizophrenia in A Beautiful Mind, but he was also a math prodigy. Even Forrest Gump was slow, but he seemed to have some magical gift which repeatedly drew him into some of the bigger historic events that occurred during his lifetime. The Soloist just sort of felt like it fell into that same category. It wasn't enough to focus on the relationship between a successful writer and a mentally ill homeless man that he befriends- the homeless guy had to have savant-like ability in playing the cello.
I'm probably nitpicking, but I just think that there was some truth in that line from Tropic Thunder about the way that actors seem to sort of gently exploit the portayal of mentally ill people in order to so some "serious acting", but it's rarely enough to just show the need for understanding and compassion toward mentally ill people- writers, directors, and actors always want their subjects to have some outstanding ability which seems to compensate for their disability, as if humanity in and of itself were not enough to demand that these people and their situation be taken seriously. Most everyone has something to offer (of course, including the mentally ill), but their gifts and the value of their lives needn't be established by the ability to perform different kinds of tricks. That's all I'm saying.
That being said, The Soloist is based upon a true story, and it was a pretty good movie. It even touches briefly upon the notion that Lopez may have been somewhat exploiting Ayers in order to come up with a compelling subject for his newspaper column, and we do see Lopez struggle with that idea a bit. Ultimately he doesn't let it bother him to much, deciding (pretty correctly) that it's almost always to do something rather than nothing, but it was nice to see such a possibility addressed.
Sunday afternoon I had band practice with the Mono E, which went pretty well.
What else? I watched good portions of Obama's commencement speech at Notre Dame over the weekend. I thought Obama did a really good job of once again taking a controversial, difficult situation and turning it into something which felt pretty positive. The president talked about the need to be tolerant of opposing points of view, about the need to resist the temptation to reduce people with opposing viewpoints into charicatures, and about the positive results that can be accomplished when opposing parties search for common ground and then move forward together (he went so far as to say that the two points of view on abortion may be fundamentally irreconcilable, but that both sides could agree on things like the need to avoid unwanted pregnancies- pragmatic solutions that could allow both sides to move forward together). Obama also made an interesting comment about the value to be found in harboring some small amount of doubt, especially when arguing about political issues. He basically alluded to the fact that there are very few things in this life that we can be 100% sure about with absolute certainty (or at least not on issues which have smart, earnest people making strong arguments on both sides- as with the abortion issue), and that in an intellectually honest argument, harboring some amount of doubt can play a positive role in helping people to avoid self righteousness, zealotry, and dogmatic thinking, and that doubt can force us to acknowledge that opposing views have some amount of merit, even when we find ourselves strongly disagreeing with them.
It's been a while since I've heard much wisdom coming from the office of commander-in-chief, but I was impressed by what Obama had to say. Kind of cool to have a president that can actually make you think from time to time.
As time passes I feel less anger toward George W. (he seems like more of a kind of hapless tool of people who had some seriously suspect motives- I'm looking in your directions Cheney and Rove), but even when I don't feel angry at him I feel like he was, at best, a colossal disappointment. Even by Republican standards (small, efficient government and a strong private sector economy) he failed pretty miserably.
Well, that's about if today. Have a good one!
p.s.- Oh yeah. I think Pelosi may be screwing up. She tried to claim that the CIA never briefed her about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (claiming she didn't oppose them because she didn't know they were being used), but the CIA has notes from briefings which show the disclosure of just such information as one of the listed items on the agenda. I think the CIA gets ordered to do a lot of questionable stuff, and politicians just sort of ignore it, thinking it will never see the light of day, but when the operations become public they typically try to throw the agency under the bus. Lord knows the CIA has done some very questionable stuff (there's that whole training Bin Laden to fight the Soviets thing and their participation in the Iranian revolution that eventually brought the Ayatollah to power- just for starters), but somehow I just don't trust Pelosi on this thing. The CIA has been through this kind of stuff too many times before and is too adept at covering their butts to have not briefed her about these enhanced interrogation techniques. I'm not sure if it would be more disturbing if she were lying or if she really wasn't paying much attention to what was going on in relation to U.S. torture policies, even when she was briefed on it.
I'm also happy to hear that President Obama is a fan of the new Star Trek movie and Star Trek in general. That's good stuff.
2 comments:
Is that the same guy that was pointing and yelling "you are cursed by Jesus!!" at people outside the Courthouse on Friday?
Wait. I thought that guy was with you!
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