Friday, July 15, 2011

July - Summer 2011



Wisdom of the Sages

Episode VII

July – Summer 2011


Hello People of the World;

Happy Birth of a Nation Day to you and yours! To celebrate, I let a European immigrant family sign a lease in my backyard! Boy, this humidity doesn’t make the heat any easier to bear. But what do you expect? It’s summer. Why act surprised?

Guess what, by my estimation, it has been ten years since I began putting out my overly, jam-packed email to which I entitled “Wisdom of the Sages” and sent it out to all of my friends’ email addresses. Ten years of sharing with you my observations, news that interested only me, movie reviews, the odd book or movie quote and all around inbox nuisance, which recently expanded to video form.

I will soon be posting a WotS Video on my observations on this very minor accomplishment in my life. But, firstly, to celebrate this “milestone”, I present an overly packed edition of your favorite now-‘blog newsletter! Anyways, let’s get started, shall we?


1:[ First item of the month: I’ve noted a recent phenomenon: Parents pushing larger-than-necessary children in baby strollers. You’ve seen them, in the streets, crowding the already packed bus, taking precious seating on el trains, making the lines longer wherever there happens to be a line in front of you. There they are, moving in a large pack with a huge, gigantic, gi-normous, three-seat, two-tiered stroller with a sun hood, cup holders and inflated tires, getting on the crowded #22 bus. Inside sits a kid that clearly doesn’t need to be in it. He or she’s 4-years-old, stuffing their face with Cheet-ohs or the like, kicking their dragging legs and huge tennis shoes and the parents don’t care. This kid has a frickin’ vocabulary, for cri-sakes! They promptly block the aisle with their kid and cart and the bus rolls on without a care, despite the audio warning that states: when the bus is crowded, baby strollers should be folded to make more room.

Despite my prejudiced judgment of them, these are very prepared parents that at least are making an effort at making their children comfortable. I’ve seen parents not even try. And those that complain usually don’t have children to begin with. Imagine taking a child out for an entire day in the heat of summer or cold of winter. The child will not last long regardless of how much sugar you give them. Little kids get tired. So, in an effort to make sure the child reserves energy for the destination they are heading to, they drag out the stroller. Because, as I have experienced, any kid will yell “I’m tired” at some inconvenient point and so the parent will place the child in the stroller to keep them on the move.

Let’s face facts: a child does NOT like being dragged around. So, putting them in a stroller until they are big enough (well, bigger) to keep up is pretty smart on some parents’ part. Plus, with a kid in a stroller, you are able to keep a better eye on them in huge crowds and know where they are at all times. I am willing to endure some inconvenience for the sake of a strangers’ child’s safety and a parent’s sanity. Been there, done that….


2:[ So, I saw U2 360 at Soldier Field and man, it was a great show. My only complaints are that the sound system seemed off from our seats, with Bono’s mic turned down and we got a lot of slapback echo from those ugly scoreboards there and I wish they sang more songs off the new album, which is vastly, vastly, VASTLY underrated, other than that? Awesomeness defined. I loved the updated graphics on the video cone, the worn-in look of The Claw and as always, the simple presence of the band, which seems to elevate the whole show.

This was also the first rock concert for my Char. She thoroughly enjoyed it. As soon I announced that I would be taking her, Bonnie and Sammie to the show, Bono hurt his back and the concert was postponed a year. But, to see Char sing along, recognize songs she loves was well worth the wait. She still brings it up when ever we’re together. Her favorite part was elevation.

I enjoyed the new intro to “One” with a new greeting by recently freed Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Loved the inclusion of “Zooropa” and “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me Kill Me”. With the closer “Moment of Surrender” and the final inclusion of “One Tree Hill”, the band was in good form. A great show. This was the fifth time I’ve seen them live.


3:[ I was challenged to write a 2 word review of “Green Lantern”, so, to satisfy that: Pee Yew.

Since I love my Char with all of my heart, I am guilty of contributing to the financial rewarding of Michael Bay’s soulless moviemaking and to the success of “Transformers 3”. I was actually quite hopeful when I saw that last trailer because it hinted that a real story might be taking place with the robots. But in the end it was nothing but more flash and bigger ‘splosions. There was a bit more of a storyline but in the end, this trilogy failed its own mythology. Wasted the characters of the robots, and distilled it down to two-hour digital effects reels. Char laughed at the single shot of the pretty girl standing there, as Char put it, “just being pretty.”

The live action Megatron has to be the most ineffectual bad guy in the history of movies. Then, Optimus Prime kills him, really easily at the end. I’m not spoiling anything in that because let’s face it. Megatron died in all of the movies. That’s how ineffectual a bad guy he is. Don’t worry, he’ll be back in the sequel, prequel, reboot.

And because there was nothing else I wanted to take Char to, we saw “Cars 2”. Boy, was I confused with all the answers to all the questions left over from the first “Cars”. I was so lost. It was about the tow truck’s adventures in the world. It was fun, but utterly frivolous. I am sure they had to make this to broker “Brave” into production.

I have more to say about “Green Lantern”, but it did everything I feared it would do wrong. Once again, the film fails its own mythology. And all this flash points to a disturbing trend in movie watching: the utter infantilization of movie audiences. All people want now is to be entertained.

They want flash and dazzled masked as story and character. They want loud noises and explosions masked as taut thrillers and action. They want cheap jump-put scares and nostalgia-induced movie killers over genuine chills and mental mindf*cks that smarter movies are capable of. They want remakes and prequels and sequels and reboots rather than trying something different with a familiar formula. People want no risks and mental escape hatches rather than a challenge to their brains to think ahead or ponder the ponderables. Those whom do not want to “sit though boring movies where nothing happens” are simply afraid to challenge themselves.

“13 Assassins” had the right balance and it was cool. “Tree of Life” was challenging and all the more richer for it. You can call me a movie snob but I am not as snobbish as many people I know. I feel I have found a good balance of what makes a good movie for me. Anyways.

I saw these three movies and all of them felt like cartoons, non-sustentative. But I love my Char and I’ll watch them with her. What is really cool is how she will talk about them and pick them apart too. She didn’t like them as much as a child should. But then again, she’s not a child any more. She thinks about them. She had more questions about the mythology of the Lanterns, the history of the transformers, she buzzed about those, did research on them and discussed them with me, more so than she did with the actual movies. It is comforting that I am raising a smart movie-watcher here. So, maybe there is hope after all….


4:[ Remember all that talk about The Rapture? How it was to occur on May 21, 2011? When it didn’t, the date was changed. And, we all laughed at the people making the predictions and the folks who believed. Yeah, I have one question about that: What if it DID happen? Not that I mean let’s talk about it as a hypothetical but as an actual passed event. What if it DID happen and none of us were worth the Almighty’s selection?

Maybe that’s why we laugh at all these Rapture predictions and the like. Because we know, deep down inside, as a human race, we are TOTALLY not worth it. Maybe that’s why they keep changing the date and times; because it didn’t happen the way we wanted it to, because we were not chosen or because we are not the zenith of human morality. Maybe, we really are not worth it.

The only other option compounds the question of belief, so we’ll ignore that for now.

What if The Rapture happened, but none of us are the piety worth selecting?


5:[ Ah yes, settle in Readers for more of:

Adventures at the Coffee Shop!

+ “If I may ask,” the new tall, pretty barista begins, and then continues to ask despite my not giving an answer to either regard, “What tribe are you?”

After the usual flair of anger spikes, which I usually quickly quell because it is entirely unfair, I reply, “Northern Arapaho.”

“Excuse me, what?” She couldn’t hear me. So I had to convert to my speaking voice rather than my talking voice. People who know me well know the difference, “Northern Arapaho.”

“Huh, I never heard of them,” Why am I not surprised? That is usually the follow-up to “What tribe are you?” in The Conversation.

So, I know what is coming next after I reply, “We’re Plains Indians.”

“Yeah? Where from?”

“Wyoming.”

“Never heard of any Native Americans from Wyoming.”

“Well, we’re there.” Then, with that out of the way comes Part Two of The Conversation: The Real Reason I Asked Because I Don’t Really Care About You:

“I’m part Indian, too.”

One of these days I will work up the nerve to answer “Well, I’m not” but for now I think that would be pretty rude.

“Through my mother’s side,” (Why is it always the ‘mother’s side’?), she continues “She never told me which, but she said, Woodlands Indian.”

We talk about woodlands for a little while, mostly, what areas constitute woodlands, mostly so we can determine what tribe. But she felt compelled to add, “But my mom said it’s only a small part. Not that it would matter, right?”

To which I replied, with all sincerity, “Well, so long as you are still you as a person, that would be the most important, I think.”

And, that’s were I left it. She never spoke to me again outside of talking about the weather once. Why is it that people ALWAYS talk about the weather with Indians? I do my best to be patient with these conversations because of the sensibilities of today you can offend almost anyone without even trying. I’m pretty damn good at that. Ask anyone. Anyways. I can tell you this much right now. More people will be interested in her being a very partly Woodland Indian, than in me being an enrolled member of the Northern Arapaho tribe….

+ I feel that I’ve spent at least 10% (maybe more) of my life standing in lines of one form or another. I feel I am pretty good at waiting. A lot of people wait in lines. I am perfectly capable for waiting in lines. I am Waiting’s Patron Saint. I have even waited five hours for the chance, the CHANCE to give Lucasfilm my money for a t-shirt and an action figure. I’ve waited in lines for movies, concerts, at the post office, at the grocery store, for autographs, signed books, for food and the like and none of that has ever really bothered me. Or I try not to let it. But for some reason, I get so mad when after standing in line for ten minutes to order a coffee and sit down at a table in a fast-crowding shop, someone can just walk in, plop their shit down at the only empty table and then get in line. That just frickin’ burns me. I try to not lose my world famous patience over it, but still….

+ One time, waiting for my Chicago brothers Mike and Dave to pick me up at the Wilson/Lincoln Avenues Starbucks I found out that: Doing nothing makes white people nervous.

Please excuse my racist assertion. (Or don’t, you’d be justified.) But the place was so crowded and folk there were sooooo set on keeping all available tables to themselves. I had to ask an old lady if I could sit at the table next to her because she was sitting alone at two tables pushed together. I pulled one apart and sat down and waited. I had my medium iced coffee (Sorry, I refuse to use the Stabucks lingo for sizes) and was waiting for the creamer station to open up. A minute passed into 15 as I sat there pretty much unmoving, except to rest my chin in my hand and to shift my weight. I did so also to cool down from walking in the humidity.

Once a table at the window opened up, I moved there and thought I’d see what happened if I kept it up. I sat down with my un-creamed, untouched coffee and waited for my bros, doing nothing. I had my manpurse set aside, my coffee melting and I did nothing. Just sat and waited. Man, everyone after a few minutes would look at me until I caught their eye. There was maybe one Latina gal in there waiting for her mom, since I couldn’t avoid overhearing her phone conversation, and she just didn’t care. Nope, all the Caucasians were looking at me nervously.

They all looked up from their iPads and Macbooks to stare at me until I caught their eyes, for which they immediately went back to what they were doing. But they snuck peeks during my time there, some even whispering and pointing me out to their companions. I was not angry nor did I feel discriminated against because that was the reaction I wanted to evoke. I sat there for 45 minutes before I got up to cream my coffee….

+ In that same Starbucks, I noticed something: A lot of people just sit around and do nothing. I’m serious. I miss the days when we were smarter than our phones. But all I saw among the elite are scads of people sitting around, looking dully at a screen of some sort. Sad, really…. (And hypocritical, because I’m staring at a screen as I write this….)


6:[ I have decided to name my Virgin Mobile cell phone “Floyd” after the character in the movie “True Romance.” Here’s why: My cell phone is so totally inept at relaying messages in a timely manner, just like the movie character. At times a whole day has passed, a WHOLE DAY before my phone beeps an alert that I’ve gotten a text or missed a call or has a voice mail.

I remember one day I was talking to my co-worker Debra and when she mentioned that she returned my call a few hours before, my phone beeps like it’s saying “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that dude.”

There are times I’m with Bonnie and Char and my phone will beep with missed calls from them days before. Sheesh. So, now my cell phone is named Floyd. So, from now on, when I mention that Floyd never gave me the message, you will know what I’m talking about.


7:[ And now Wisdom of the Sages presents:

An Ever-growing List of Things That MUST Stop!

+ Perfectly able-bodied people, that park crookedly in the handicap space to get “a quick coffee”? That sh*t must end.

+ Giving a fucking pass to famous people: Chris Brown does not need awards, folks. I’m sorry. Charlie Sheen doesn’t need attention or our money. He needs to go away. Mel Gibson, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Octomom, Reality TV Stars, seriously folks, we need to exercise some common sense here….

+ People walking out into traffic! Still! I don’t know the pedestrian laws here but I’m pretty sure you have the right-of-way when you cross in the crosswalks, but in the middle of the street? Come on, common sense states: if you walk into traffic, you’re going to get hit. Common Sense, when did we collectively lose that?

+ I’m going to tell you this story: On the bus going down Western avenue a Crazy Lady gets on. I put that as a proper title because every so often, one gets on the bus or train. You know the type: dirty, silver hair, second hand sweater or jacket, sometimes they wear old school eye glasses, overly loud, overly talkative with too many bags. Yeah, you know the type. Not that we are judgmental or prejudice.

Anyways, she gets on and gets to her seat, when, right behind her a man in a motorized wheelchair gets on and his fare card is short one dollar, so the driver says he cannot ride. He is about to turn around and get off when, apropos of nothing, the Lady says, “I have a dollar!”

She then, makes a show of her getting the dollar out of one of her many bags, stating over and over, “I have a dollar. I’m sorry, I’m moving as fast as I can.”

And, once the guy in the wheelchair takes his designated spot he thanks the lady for the dollar, and the Lady did not stop: “I know what’s it’s like to be in a wheel chair”, “God gives us our pains for a reason” (As if that is a comfort to the guy in the wheelchair.) and she kept saying over and over “Well, all the people on this bus are selfish. They’re self-centered. They care only for themselves.” Like that, over and over, “They’re selfish. They’re self-centered. They care only for themselves.”

People just went back to there papers or looked away, ignoring her judgments and proclamations. One even made the ‘crazy’ hand sign to another passenger. But the Lady kept on; “They’re selfish. They’re self-centered. They care only for themselves.”

I went back to my paper. I was annoyed at her constant rant until it struck me: She was absolutely right. We were all selfish and self-centered on that bus. I mean, even though she never gave anyone else a chance to help the guy in the wheelchair, no one jumped at the chance to help him. We were all secretly glad he was being told to get off because, why not, more seating for us able-bodies. There was no “End-of-’Spartacus’” scene with every passenger standing up, one after the other, holding up a single, while stating, “I, have a dollar”, “I have a dollar”, “No, I have a dollar” and so forth.

No, we ignored the both of them, the wheelchair man and the Crazy Lady. We ignored her truth about our natures. Because, we all had that loophole, that mental escape clause to ignore her truth with the fact that she was a bit goofy. Our smug self-satisfaction and unwillingness to help washed away simply because we can call her the Crazy Lady.

So, that sort of judgment? That needs to stop….

+ All of the friends I have that I consider smart, intelligent but buy into the zeitgeists? That has to stop. You all know better. Come on.


8:[ So this is now our National Discourse, is it? The Casey Anthony verdict? Jennifer versus Angelina? Blago imprisoned? Really folks? Reality TV and shallow movies? Bread and Circuses, people. Amalgamation and Capital. We have better things to think about. We have graver issues to deal with and yet we always have time to find the things that keep us separated. We seem to pre-occupied with the “American Dream” when we should be wide awake….

Turn off the TV for a while. Listen to the world around you. I’m not saying I’ve found the perfect way or that I have the answer, but looking for an answer is better than being told how to act, wouldn’t you think?


9:[ From the “This Just In” Department: I went and saw “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II” and while I will right a more comprehensive review at a later time, I must gush about the “The Dark Knight Rises” teaser trailer. Simply an awesome tease of what’s to come.

Ra’s al Ghul’s monologue from “Batman Begins” about becoming more than a man and turning to legend. Then a long scene of a hospital bed-ridden James Gordon talking to either Bruce Wayne or Batman, it is never made clear, begging for Batman to return. There is a view of a crumbling Gotham City in which the skyline becomes the Bat symbol. Which is the latest teaser poster. Then, the last shot. Oh my gosh!!! Batman backing away in fear of a hulking mass coming at him!

July 2012 cannot get here fast enough. It’ll be online soon. Check it out if you can. But nothing beats seeing it on the big screen. It is at the top of my Top Ten of 2012 Movies to see!


10:[ Last Item of the Month: Turns out Cheyenne, Wyoming is the new Cayman Islands! It turns out that some major corporations that want tax breaks use a house address in my old home state as a mailing address. According to the article: “Wyoming Corporate Services will help clients create a company, and more: set up a bank account for it; add a lawyer as a corporate director to invoke attorney-client privilege; even appoint stand-in directors and officers as high as CEO. Among its offerings is a variety of shell known as a "shelf" company, which comes with years of regulatory filings behind it, lending a greater feeling of solidity.” Yep, that’s right. Wyoming is the new home of tax loopholes.

It figures.


That will do it for this month.

I really would like to thank any of you that continue to read my little diatribes. I really do write with the readers in mind. And also, thank you to all my friends, whom, from time to time, will pipe up about something I wrote about. Hearing “Yeah, I read you’re webpage/’blog/newsletter, and…” is pretty nice and always leads to a good talk after. Even, if you don’t agree with me.

So, for the next Wisdom of the Sages Video, I think I’ll take you through my process of writing this little blog. Keep an eye on YouTube for that very soon. Ten years is a long time to keep this silly little thing going. As my Bonnie put, it’s a testament to my “Stick-to-it-iviness”. I guess. As always, feel free to comment on, or disagree with any item on here. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks again.


Until Next Time, “I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control everything really are.”



© 2011 Ernest M. Whiteman III

1 comment:

Lynne said...

Re: Adventures of the Coffee Shop (July 2011)
Ernest, please examine your motives for wearing your "Native Pride" hat in Chicago. Are you truly proud of your heritage or is it an opportunity
to feel angry, victimized, and morally superior to white people who ask about your tribal lineage?

Arapahos are not one of the top 25 most populous tribes in the U.S. Couple that fact with the American History curriculum that most adults in the U.S. have been subjected to: White Men and War and it leads to Caucasians being ignorant of the more than 500 tribes of Native Americans in the U.S.

Native Americans used to comprise 100% of the population of the area now known as the United States; now they are less that 1% (Source: 2010 U.S. federal census). Native Americans have intermarried with other races. As a result,many non-Native looking Americans are descendants of Native Americans. Unless you're going to wrestle them to the ground and force them to take a DNA test proving otherwise, you should just take that leap of faith and accept their word.

Besides, what does it matter? They're just trying to connect with you. Would you feel disappointed if no one ever inquired about your ethnicity while you were wearing your "Native Pride" hat?

I, too, have a friend who claimed to be a descendant of a Cherokee princess. I kept my mouth shut but thought, "Yeah, cool story bro!".

Retail clerks talk about the weather with everyone, not just Native Americans. It's a benign topic that fills the silence while you are being served.

Wishing you acceptance and serenity.